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Last updated: 29-07-05

Eastern Creek UR-3R Facility, Sydney, Australia

The Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility is attracting international attention as a benchmark for diverting waste away from landfill through processing and resource recovery.

The Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility - a world first

The Eastern Creek Facility

The Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility is diverting approximately 70 percent of household waste from landfill using mechanical biological waste treatment. Greenpeace UK endorses mechanical biological treatment technology as the most environmentally acceptable means of dealing with municipal solid waste.
 
The Premier of New South Wales, the Hon. Bob Carr MP, who officially opened the Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility in September 2004, said: "What is exciting about today is that you can see the eventual end of landfill in waste disposal. It means a huge step towards the ending of landfill as a strategy for disposing of the waste of this big city of over four million people."
 
NSW Premier Bob Carr opens the facility, Sept 2004

The A$75 million UR-3R™ Facility is designed to process up to 260,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste per annum (11 percent of Sydney's waste) over a period of 25 years through integrated sorting, biological digestion and composting processes.

The Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility was built, and is owned and operated by Global Renewables in a public private partnership with WSN Environmental Solutions (formerly Waste Service NSW). It operates under a long-term contract with WSN Environmental Solutions, backed by the NSW Government.

The UR-3R Process includes the groundbreaking separation ResourceSort™ process (derived from the Australian minerals industry) to recover plastic, glass, paper and metal recyclable materials. The organic portion of the waste - such as food scraps and garden waste - is then put through the ISKA Percolation process, which cleans and deodorises it before generating renewable energy from the liquid product and making high quality compost products for agriculture and horticultural use from the remaining material.

Inside the operations at Eastern Creek
 
The Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility is designed to be completely self-sufficient in energy and water. By using liquid captured on-site it takes none from Australia's precious water resources. It will generate enough green energy to meet its own needs and export the remainder into the power grid.

The Eastern Creek UR-3R™ Facility will produce biogas sufficient to produce 17,000 megawatt hours of green energy (enough to power 2,250 households), 300,000 tonnes of Emission Reduction Units per annum (carbon credits equivalent to taking 50,000 cars off the road per year), and more than 60,000 tonnes of compost products in addition to recyclable products (paper, glass, steel, plastics and aluminium). Mitsui & Co (Australia) Ltd and BP Australia Limited have forward purchased 1,500,000 tonnes of the Emission Reduction Units.