Grant for Meru tip first step in Geraldton recycling

The City of Greater Geraldton has secured more than $1 million of Federal Government funding to upgrade the city’s waste management facilities.

Mayor Shane Van Styn called the regional resource recovery facility the first step towards a household recycling program in Geraldton.

The project, totalling $5.2m, will construct a new waste transfer station, materials processing facility, and a new weighbridge, as well as upgrade the power network and tip shop.

“At the moment we have insufficient and unreliable power to run crushers and shredders,” Mr Van Styn said.

The upgrade will see cars routed through the tip shop, allowing better sorting of materials. An additional weighbridge will be built to allow more accurate measurement of waste input, and separation bins will be made more easily accessible for heavy loads.

“In order to even consider recycling you must first have clean separated waste streams,” Mr Van Styn said.

The city currently lacks a suitable market for recyclable waste, and with mixed plastic exports banned and China only accepting clean type one and two plastics, yellow-lid residential recycling bins are still a long way off.

The city has been planning an upgrade to the Meru Landfill site for at least two years in order to meet State guidelines. An application was made for $4.6m in Federal funding under the Building Better Regions fund, but was rejected in favour of an airport expansion project.

This $1.13m grant means an additional $4.1m will come from city coffers. Now that Federal funding has been secured, the facility is required to be completed by December 2023. The city does not expect construction to start until mid-2022.