Across Australia, the design of Public Waste Transfer Stations (PWTS) has often followed a familiar pattern of push pits and direct to Bin (Sawtooth) facilities.
These facilities involve extensive design, large-scale civil works, masses of concrete, elevated platforms, and complex roadways that loop to different deposition points. In recent decades, to address the need to intercept problem waste and recyclables inbound drop-off halls have been added. This approach has been the standard for decades, the costs to implement and upgrade these facilities to meet current OH&S and compliance standards makes them a major project that many councils and communities just can’t justify given limited budgets and revenues.
The cost of this traditional infrastructure is why even in metro areas we still see the public depositing directly to a landfill or stockpile. Most councils have spent significant funds preparing numerous iterations of concept PWTS designs for facilities that they simply can’t afford to build.
Several councils seeking out alternatives have discovered the LBin PWTS system and elected to implement it, spending less than they were budgeting for design and project management of the traditional systems and 1/10 of the budgeted cost for the traditional concept designs.
Sites with around 160 customers a day are implementing LBin systems for less than $100k. For the same capacity fully optioned up with grading, compaction, asphalt accessways, boundary barriers, concrete pads and Sheltabay roofed structures over the LBins are costing less than $500k. For budget-constrained councils, this scale of affordability opens up the possibility of upgrading existing unsafe and EPA non-compliant systems without requiring multi-million-dollar budgets. For sites that still have customers going onto a landfill this is a quick fix for the associated safety and EPA compliance issues.
The LBin design approach is simple, with standardised engineering and vendor supported site set outs there is no need for a protracted and expensive design phase. A flat area with sufficient turning space for customer vehicles and a segregated area for machine operations is all that’s needed. The system can even be set up on capped landfills as footings are not needed.
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Unlike concrete constructed PWTS the LBin modular assets can be reconfigured for changes in operational planning, regulation, or demand equipment can even be transferred between sites.
Barriers to Acceptance
So why isn’t everyone doing this now? It is human nature to be resistant to change, in waste the infrastructure and expert support systems are very much geared to the convenience of doing the same old thing. In the industry’s consulting and design environment many organisations have established design, engineering and project management teams where a good part of their revenues come from delivering traditional PWTS.
For them, this new simple approach is a direct threat to their business model. For other consultants, this represents an opportunity to do things better for their customers who understand their obligations to provide safe accessible and compliant infrastructure.
With the rapidly evolving adoption of the LBin system across small and large public waste operations in regional and metro areas, the conversation about waste transfer in Australia is shifting. Councils have an obligation to make value for money capital decisions in the best interest of their residence.
It is a difficult argument to justify spending millions to construct a traditional PWTS that fails basic safety, compliance and value criteria when compliant options are available at a fraction of the cost. Systems like LBin are no longer niche experiments; they are part of a wider rethink of what waste transfer should look like in the years ahead