Agenda

The NSW Circular Economy Policy will form the basis for a 20-year Waste Strategy for NSW, to be led by the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) in partnership with Infrastructure NSW. The Strategy will set a 20-year vision for reducing waste, driving sustainable recycling markets and identifying and improving the state and regional waste infrastructure network. This session will explore NSW’s vision for its circular economy along with new policies and incentives brought to enhance sustainability.

Sutherland Shire Council launched the project this year which has collected over 176,000 plastic bags and packaging and glass from around 55,000 bottles that have been diverted from landfill to build a road in the Sydney suburb of Engadine. By melting down this refuse and turning it into bitumen additive, Sutherland Shire Council is creating roads with 65% better fatigue resistance under heavy traffic. Such roads also require less virgin materials to make, and last longer than standard asphalt counterparts, thereby cutting down on building, maintenance and repair costs.

The result is optimized daily operations, reduced costs, and increased waste diversion by.partnering with councils and providing a convenient and reliable recycling service for residents and businesses.

SIn Towards a Circular City: Place as Living System, Hatch RD partner Stephen Moore identifies the concept of place as living system to accelerate the transition towards circular cities. Drawing on international precedent and practical case studies from around Australia, Stephen illustrates the evolution of Hatch RD’s Seven Essential Elements of Great Places into living systems where regenerative design processes and new tools to quantify the performance of circular cities accelerate positive impact for all.

• Preparing for the influx – How cities can ready themselves for the future population spike through sustainable city planning
• Meeting the demand – Finding long-term solutions to rising urban energy needs
• Boosting urban mobility – Sustainable transport solutions to help reduce traffic
• Waste not, want not – Why effective waste management is needed to improve quality of urban life

Dr. Scott V. Valentine
Director & Senior Circular Economy Specialist
KPMG Australia

Dr. Nimish Biloria
Associate Professor, Empathic Environments, School of Architecture, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

Australian scientists Len Humphreys and Sydney University professor Thomas Maschmeyer, have developed a technology that could make all plastic recyclable, as the country grapples with how to deal with its waste crisis. The patented technology was created to process plastics that cannot currently be recycled.Australians throw out 3.5 million tonnes of plastic each year, but currently only around 10 per cent of it is recycled. The rest is either burned, buried or shipped overseas.

The Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTR) uses chemical recycling that changes the plastics at a molecular level using hot water at a high pressure to turn them back into oil. The oil can be turned into bitumen, petrol or back into different kinds of plastics.

• The journey from community consultation to legislative development and implementation
  
• Achieving results through collaboration – working across governments and interest groups

Dr. Scott V. Valentine
Director & Senior Circular Economy Specialist
KPMG Australia

The council implemented a FOGO project to encourage householders to separate their food and organics waste from their general waste. The drive came from a 2010 waste audit that showed domestic kerbside garbage bins contained up to 50 percent food and garden waste and other compostable organic material.

The council started the journey by undertaking extensive community engagement to raise awareness and seek community input. This resulted in a waste strategy that culminated with a decision to implement the phased introduction of a three-bin system and construction of a new 44,000 tonne capacity in-vessel organics composting facility. Phase one, which started in 2013, involved the collection of kerbside garden organics with a basic shred and pasteurisation process.

This was followed by Phase two, which was implemented in 2018, to collect combined FOGO and process it into recycled organic compost products through the new Remondis Lake Macquarie Organics Resource Recovery Facility.

The collection was rolled out city-wide to over 83,000 households, with a transition to a weekly FOGO collection service and a fortnightly garbage collection service which has helped Council to reduce waste to landfill by over 22,000 tonnes (22%) per year despite experiencing a continuing trend in population growth.

Personal Practical Actions In A Collective Context – Teaspoons Of Change And The UN SDGs

d’Arcy Lunn
Founder and Director
Teaspoons of Change

Principles And Practice Of Managing Sustainability Risks

• Many organizations and businesses are good at managing financial risks and have systems in place to detect, understand, evaluate, review and respond to those risks. However, these days they are much more likely to be held accountable by their stakeholders for failing to identify non-financial risks, understand them and then respond effectively to them. Non-financial risks are becoming increasingly mainstream in the media, at shareholder meetings, in legislation and investment decision-making
• Sustainability-related risks are a significant component of non-financial risks and include climate change, modern slavery, business reputation, stakeholder accountability, environmental stewardship, responsible procurement and resource management. Yet many organisations’ risk management systems are simply not able to deal as effectively with sustainability-related risks as they do with other types of risks. They are even less likely to realize, and take advantage of, sustainability-related opportunities for their business
• By the end of this workshop, you should be able to understand principles and tools to enable a more effective approach to understanding sustainability-related risks and improve your systems to identify, contextualize, prioritize and respond to them

Paul Davies
Founder & Principal
Think Sustainability

Leadership Masterclass On The Circular Economy

Hemant Chaudhary
Founder and Managing Director
Circular Economy Alliance Australia