Clough Engineering has been given the go-ahead on a ASD 30 million contract to design and construct a facility in metropolitan Perth, Australia, to turn household and other waste into marketable compost and recover inorganic materials for recycling. The facility to be built at Canning Vale for the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council (SMRC) is to be the largest of its type in Australia and will cut waste being dumped in landfill sites by more than 80%. Western Australia’s state government policy targets the total elimination of waste to landfill by 2020. The project follows the innovative Enersludge project in Subiaco for the Water Corporation which extracts oil from sewage sludge to produce an economic, recycled product and address a waste disposal problem. Dr Hewitt said Clough teamed with the Sydney-based Bedminster Bioconversion Australia (BBA) for the SMRC project four years ago to access its technology and introduce it to Western Australia. The Bedminster technology has operated worldwide since 1971, with nine plants in USA, Canada and Sweden. Australia’s first Bedminster facility has been operating at Port Stephens, NSW since July 1999 and a second is to be built at Cairns in North Queensland. Many more are now being proposed in all parts of Australia. The Canning Vale project, with a total contract value of $34.5 million, will be undertaken by the Clough-Bedminster team in two phases.
