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Shell Geelong Refinery achieves Waste Wise certification |
| 14/02/2007 |
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| Shell Geelong Refinery, a member of the Waste Wise Geelong Network, has been certified as a Waste Wise Company through Sustainability Victoria. The Waste Wise Geelong Network is a new membership program that brings businesses together to learn how to reduce waste.
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| Sustainability Victoria’s Manager Resource Smart Business, Paul Hogan, presented the refinery’s Environmental Field Advisor, David Burrell, with the certification at a Waste Wise breakfast held today. To achieve certification the refinery worked through the Waste Wise program with the assistance of the Barwon Regional Waste Management Group. Along the way, employee attitudes to recycling improved enormously. "Eight years ago the refinery had a recycling system in place that needed greater cultural awareness to succeed. When the City of Greater Geelong introduced the three-bin system in 2003, this not only boosted environmental awareness in the wider community but also within the refinery,” said David. "Our Waste Reduction Action Plan (WRAP) consists of meaningful, easy to understand steps with realistic goals. We’re committed to continuing to raise the bar for ourselves, by carrying out regular reviews and then tightening recycling requirements to reach our aspiration of zero waste to landfill,” he said. The WRAP was developed by identifying, quantifying and prioritising all the wastes generated at the refinery. This process enabled Shell to direct resources to areas that would yield the most benefit in achieving waste reduction. “When referring to recycling, most people think of traditional products such as paper and plastics. As a large industrial site, we not only look at recycling these items but also non-traditional products such as sludge and catalyst that are by-products of the refining process. This is helping the environment by saving space in landfill,” said David. The refinery is also using leading prescribed-waste recycling technology that treats wastewater taken from the Dissolved Air Floatation (DAF 2), a refinery unit that separates oil from water. The technology - 35 metre long, 2.5 metre wide bags - has halved the amount of waste that is removed and disposed of from site to landfill. As an additional benefit, it is generating cost savings of around $1 million a year. “In future we envisage that almost all of the dried sludge will be taken to our composting site, Schoe Park, for recycling,” said David. “We believe we are the first Australian refinery to use this cutting-edge technology,” he said. “Another interesting example is that last year we started recycling concrete from the 120 ha refinery site. We now collect it and send it to crushers where it is made into aggregate before being returned to us as graded pre-mixed concrete. “These initiatives are both good, practical demonstrations of how thinking outside the square is helping the refinery be more sustainable.” ENDS
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