The operators of advanced waste treatment (AWT) plants and the NSW environmental regulator have managed to hammer out an exemption that will allow the organic outputs from AWT plants to be used in certain markets, so long as they meet tough quality guidelines. The general message from operators is that the guidelines provide an extremely difficult, but not impossible, pathway to market.

The NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water (DECCW) gazetted The organic outputs derived from mixed waste exemption 2010 on March 5, with waste management head Mark Gorta providing an overview at WMAA’s NSW branch meeting last week.

Key conditions include organic outputs only being applied to land as a compost or soil amendment material for soil improvement or site rehabilitation at mine sites; plantation forestry use; non-contact agricultural use; or broad acre agricultural use.

The outputs must not be used in urban landscaping, at public contact sites, in home lawns and gardens or in potting mix – ensuring there is still a healthy market for source separated compost products.

Where AWT outputs can be used, tough application rates have also been put forth. For broad acre agriculture, a maximum 10 tonnes per hectare per year is allowed, while for non-contact agriculture and forestry the maximum is 50t/ha, and for mine sites 140t/ha.

One of the most problematic issues DECCW and industry worked through was reducing physical contamination rates, with glass, plastics and metals a major concern. Gorta said, “transitional arrangements in the exemption will enable industry to move progressively towards reducing the amount of contamination”.

For hard plastic, glass and metal fragments greater than 2mm in size, a limit of 2.5% (dry material by weight) has been set for agricultural and forestry uses up until December 31, 2011. It then falls to 1.5% until June 30, 2013, and will be reviewed from there. Higher contamination levels will be accepted in material used at mine sites, initially 5% falling to 4% from December 2011 and 2.5% from June 2013 into the indefinite future.

In terms of light flexible or plastic film, the levels for agriculture and forestry is set as 0.25% until December 2011, falling to 0.2% for the remaining period up until June 2013. For mine sites, the initial level is 5%, falling to 4% after December 2011 and 2.5% into the future.

In terms of chemical contamination, the exemption adopts levels outlined under Grade A and Grade B Biosolids Guidelines, except in the case of lead, which is a problem because of the volume of lead acid batteries in the waste stream. Lead levels for products used at mine sites will need to be below 420mg/kg, while for other applications the maximum is 300mg/kg until December 2011 and then 250mg/kg until 2013.

DECCW also said industry must implement a lead reduction program by March 1, 2011 and provide effective pre-sorting mechanisms to remove batteries and other lead containing wastes. Gorta is not being prescriptive in terms of program design: “whatever works,” he said.

While the exemption for mine site uses is settled, there will be a review of the standards for other uses past June 2013.

“Trials will be conducted, completed and reported prior to 31 December 2012 that will examine the environmental and human health impacts of contaminants in the outputs,” said Gorta, adding DECCW “intends to extend this general exemption for agricultural uses” beyond 2013.

“The nature of the extended general exemption will be determined taking into account what we learn over that period,” he said.

The response from AWT operators Inside Waste has spoken with has generally been positive, and certainly a far cry from the responses last November when there were frustrated questions about why it was taking so long to organise an exemption.

“Nobody can actually meet the new standard without making adjustments to their process, and then it gets harder still in two year’s time… but, in the end, they gave where they could and we’ve done the same thing,” said John Lawson from Global Renewables.

“We’re hanging on by our fingertips in our ability to use it… we’ve been pushed as far as we can go, but we’ve got something at least we can go with.”

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