Council windfall from landfill gas

Landfill-gas electricity generators at the Summerhill Waste Management Centre provided Newcastle council with a financial windfall last year.

Councillors were told last night that the program, run in partnership with LMS Generation, helped to boost council’s coffers by $175,000 during its first full year of operation.

But Manager of Commercial Enterprise services Daniel Ballantyne says it is unlikely revenue from the program will increase, as the council takes further steps to cut the amount of waste going to landfill.

“We have processes in place which might reduce the amount of gas produced because we might be moving to greenwaste recovery at a higher scale which will reduce the organic waste going into the cells,” he said.

“The gas collection from the cells will abate from the older cells and as we add more cells it should be fairly continuous but you’ve got to manage it and see what happens.”

Meanwhile, Newcastle council is aiming to become a leader among other Councils in waste minimisation.

While there are plans to expand the Summerhill tip, the introduction of a three-bin system later this year is expected to help cut the amount of waste going into landfill.

Mr Ballantyne says a new study is currently looking at the waste produced by the council’s own operations.

“The council has a lot of activities outside of its domestic waste collection,” he said.

“It builds roads, builds buildings, it cleans up areas and sites and it’s a developer in its own right.

“And that generates a significant amount of waste and cost and we want to be able to reduce that cost to council and of course to ratepayers indirectly.”

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