Victoria's waste crisis: Glass recycling plant barred over fire threat
Another major Melbourne recycling plant has been banned from taking more combustible waste after two chemical fires broke out there, in the latest blow to the state’s recycling industry.
The Environment Protection Authority issued the ban to Glass Recovery Services in Melbourne’s outer north on Monday, four days after firefighters attended a blaze there.
It was the second fire the MFB put out at the business in the space of 15 days.
The glass recycling factory is in Coolaroo, next door to SKM’s waste recycling plant, which was also slapped with an EPA ban in mid-February and which was the site of a huge toxic fire in 2017 that burnt for about two weeks.
More than a dozen municipal councils in Melbourne that have contracts with SKM had to divert thousands of tonnes household recyclables to landfill until the EPA ban was lifted on March 20.
Glass Recovery Services (GRS) and SKM are both owned by the Italiano family.
SKM was fined more than $16,000 last week for keeping dangerous stockpiles at its Coolaroo and Laverton sites. Its director Robert Italiano has been charged under the Environment Protection Act and is due to face court next month.
Robert’s brother Anthony Italiano is director of GRS, which promotes itself as the biggest waste glass recycling company of its kind in Australia.
The EPA said it had ordered GRS not to accept any more combustible material until its stockpiles comply with Victorian waste management policy.
“A large volume of glass waste it has received at the site has been contaminated with other types of waste, such as mixed plastics and paper and has resulted in an increased fire risk,” said Danny Childs, the EPA’s resource recovery facilities audit taskforce manager.
The company is also being investigated for failing to follow an EPA directive earlier this year to remove industrial waste identified as a fire hazard.
The plant is less than 500 metres from homes in Coolaroo.
The market for Australia's recycled waste collapsed when China stopped importing our waste in January 2018 because it is does not meet stringent new contamination standards.
The waste crisis triggered by the ban is the subject of a Victorian parliamentary inquiry.
On Monday the Andrews government announced further details of its plan to use GPS technology to track chemical waste in Victoria and keep a tighter control on the sector.
The EPA will invest $5.5 million to switch to a fully GPS electronic tracking system from July.
"The introduction of a fully electronic waste transport certificate system will enable EPA to better track the movement of waste by providing improved quality data, helping us to detect potential risks and intervene earlier," EPA chief executive Cathy Wilkinson said in a statement.
The authority uses a mix of electronic and paper waste transport certificates, with paper ones accounting for 100,000 certificates a year, and those will be phased out.
Environment Minister Lily D'Ambrosio said the move would crack down on the illegal storage of hazardous waste and increase community safety.
Earlier this month, a fire started at the Bradbury Industrial Services site in Campbellfield, sending toxic smoke plumes across nearby suburbs and injuring a worker.
The operators' licence was suspended by the EPA in March for stockpiling but the warehouse could operate to bring down the amount of waste on site.
It was identified as part of an audit of the waste industry, sparked by another chemical waste fire at West Footscray last year.
Over the next 12 months, an integrated waste tracking tool will be developed to identify trends and highlight potential illegal activity in the sector.
With AAP