$447,674 for Lismore recycling facility

LISMORE City Council’s waste facility has received $447,674 to enhance its recycling infrastructure to increase its capacity to recycle.

Lismore Recycling & Recovery Centre waste operations co-ordinator Kevin Trustum, waste education officer Danielle Hanigan and consumer resources supervisor Charlie Crethar at the new MRF recycling machine which separates waste and turns glass bottles into sand for roads. Photo Marc Stapelberg / The Northern Star. Picture: Marc Stapelberg

LISMORE City Council's waste facility has received $447,674 to enhance its recycling infrastructure to increase its capacity to recycle.

The NSW Government funding, under the Resources Recovery Facility Expansion and Enhancement grants program, is from the NSW Environmental Trust.

Lismore MP Thomas George said Council will receive the funding to install an optical sort unit for plastics to increase plastics recycling by 1,800 tonnes per annum which diverts over 25,000 cubic metres of waste from the landfill.

"This investment is just one of many the NSW Government is making to modernise waste and recycling infrastructure in NSW and improve the capacity for resource recovery," Mr George said.

"The Government has set an ambitious target of diverting 75 per cent of waste from landfill by 2021.

"To achieve this we are expanding kerbside collections to create a new network of community recycling centres and improve the infrastructure at waste facilities to enable them to recover more recyclable materials."

Information about the projects undertaken by each waste facilities is available at: www.environment.nsw.gov.au/grants/2015ResourceRecovery.htm

Further information about the NSW EPA's Waste Less, Recycle More initiative is available at: http://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/waste/wasteless.htm