TransPacific Technical Services’ Organic Treatment Plant will join a growing range of initiatives that are recycling waste and reducing the volumes sent to landfills at the Council’s former landfill site.
The plant is owned and operated by Transpacific Technical Services (NZ) Ltd, a subsidiary of Transpacific Industries Group Ltd, leaders in the field of integrated waste services in Australasia.
The plant removes solids from a range of liquid organic wastes originating from dairy, meat processing, food and other industries as well as liquid organic waste from commercial and domestic sources in a two stage process.
Firstly the raw liquid is run through a screen that separates out matter more than five millimetres in diameter. The waste that remains goes through a second process where a belt squeezes out the rest of the liquid from the remaining solids.
The liquid component is further processed at the City Council’s Wastewater Treatment Plant while the sludge goes to the Council’s compost site and is mixed with green waste to become ongoing landfill cover.
The plant has the capacity to process more than 30,000 litres a day that would otherwise be sent to a landfill. It will be run by an Operations Manager and other staff engaged as tanker drivers to collect and deliver the liquid waste.
The City Council’s Water and Waste Services Manager, Chris Pepper, says the plant is another significant step in reducing the waste that ends up in landfills and demonstrates the Council’s commitment to sustainability.
"The Council has been closely involved in the development of the plant since late last year," he says.
The Council’s Acting Mayor, John Hornblow, who will officially open the plant, says the process is a further example of how the City Council is at the forefront of waste minimisation in New Zealand.
He says the organic plant joins other operations at the former landfill such as the processing and baling of recyclables, the processing of green waste for compost, food and stable (horse manure and straw) for sale, the breeding of worms commercially and methane gas generation which powers both the resource recovery centre and the wastewater treatment plant.
Further waste minimisation activities could be undertaken at the site following City Council consideration and adoption of a Waste Management and Minimisation Plan next month.