SoilCyclers delivers environmental breakthrough at Ensham mine

A company of just 15 employees could end the long-running tension between mining and environmentalists with a remarkable new breakthrough in how mines are rehabilitated. Here’s how.

A small company is repairing abandoned mine-scarred landscapes with profitable farmland, and is looking for a major partner for its next project.

SoilCyclers has successfully transformed waste overburden from Ensham mine in the Bowen Basin to grazing land in just six weeks, something managing director Alison Price said nobody believed was possible.

The breakthrough came about through manufacturing topsoil out of overburden and a new way to manage waste water.

“We had full grass coverage within six weeks,” Ms Price said.

She added “the next step” was to develop crops and farmland out of mine sites.

“There’s a whole host of other opportunities where you can turn not-very-productive land into something that has whole new industries for communities around the mine site, so yes that is entirely possible and that is one of the next steps we would like to take,” she said.

“The technology exists now.

“We are ready to do it at full-scale”.

The company can boast a record to back up its rhetoric after successfully turning tailings from a BHP copper mine in South America into topsoil to grow radishes.

“It’s not that much of a stretch, we just haven’t done it on a large scale yet,” she said.

“So we’re looking for a client to do that kind of thing with.”

SoilCyclers turned the Ensham mine’s waste overburden and saline water into green pastures in six weeks. Picture: Contributed

Alongside economic possibilities are environmental benefits, including to the Great Barrier Reef.

“By creating a manufactured topsoil with all of the right physical, chemical and biological properties to grow things and by adding water and a salt-tolerant seed mix, there is literally nothing left to go wrong,” she said.

“It means you can grow grass quickly, which means there is no more erosion, because the grass coverage stops the erosion, which means that you are not losing more topsoil, you are not having soil ending up in waterways and then ending up out in the Great Barrier Reef.”

Ms Price said a “female perspective” had helped her to reconsider what was possible in the mining field.

“I come into the industry and I learn the industry but then I see things and I’m not afraid to ask why,” she said.

“Why do we do it that way?

“‘Because we’ve always done it that way’ is not a good enough answer for me.

“It is a matter of thinking very differently about problems and then assembling an amazing team around you.”

The company uses trommel screens in the manufacturing process, sifting big rocks out of the soil and making physical, biological and chemical changes to the waste material so it takes on the characteristics of topsoil in which things will grow.

“Actually on this project, the manufactured soil performed better than the site’s existing topsoil,” Ms Price said.

“The science exists now to rehabilitate these mine sites to better than what they were before mining.”

SoilCyclers conducted the trial process at Ensham in collaboration with Cammel Consulting and water specialists Innovate Enviro and Ms Price said the results could be replicated at other sites across the Basin.

The company nabbed for its efforts a gong at the 2022 Queensland Mining Awards, with Judge Andrew Wilson highlighting the company’s cost-saving and remediation outcomes.