Carbon Neutral Burnside 2030

Did you know that the City of Burnside saw a 236-tonne reduction in landfill waste collected in 2022/23? Our Environmental Sustainability report for 2022/23 is now available to view, and includes other highlights such as:

• Powering Up: New solar panel systems were installed at Council’s Swimming Centre, Depot and Dulwich Community Centre. Over time, these systems will save Council money and reduce carbon emissions.
• Prolific Planting: Council planted over 9,000 plants in Burnside, including over 1,300 trees along streets and in reserves. Council also gave over 7,000 plants to private landholders in Burnside to increase canopy cover and improve habitat. Additionally, the Burnside Carbon Offset Scheme (B-COS) funded the seeding of over 5,000 trees near Kapunda.
• Less Waste: Compared to the previous year, there was a 236-tonne reduction in landfill waste collected through Council’s kerbside bin service. This reduction is good for the environment and saved Council over $45,000 in landfill levy and fees.
• Better Bins: Council is working with East Waste and bin manufacturer MASTEC to trial bins with up to 80% recycled plastic. This project is part of a commitment to Circular Procurement, buying recycled materials to reduce Council’s environmental footprint.
• Water Wise: Council installed over 80 new verge soakers. These devices capture water, allowing it to soak into the soil, supporting street trees and reducing stormwater runoff.
  
  

For further information, head to bit.ly/CoBScorecard

Did you know that Council provided over 20,000 plants for public and private planting last year? And we’ve made great progress on reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint. Want to find out more? The information is included in Council’s annual Environmental Sustainability Scorecard.

Important topics, such as tree planting, waste management and carbon footprint are all included. For each topic, baselines have been established. The baselines are a starting point, established in previous years, for comparison to the achievements in the last year. The Scorecard also includes other important achievements, like the Council being recognised as a Tree City of the World.

For further information, a detailed Environmental Sustainability Report is published annually and is available at: bit.ly/CoBScorecard

The inaugural Environment Day Awards were announced at Beaumont House on Sunday 11 April.

The awards celebrate initiatives and activities that Burnside community members are implementing, across four award categories in the City.

Climate Change Challenge award winners, and Burnside residents, Dr Susan Marsden and Michael Szwarcbord said that they feel strongly about the threats to us all from the climate crisis.

"Everything we can all do, large and small, is really important," Dr Marsden said.

The award winners each received a wooden bowl made by Burnside resident and local wood turner, Flora Rumbelow, as their award 'trophy'. Most of the trophies were turned from a section of a fallen Red Gum branch. One trophy was made from an Olive tree branch taken as part of a regular pruning program at Beaumont House.

The winners are:

Local Sustainability

Andrew Crompton

Andrew works tirelessly as a volunteer at the Waterfall Gully site and gives so much time and incredible knowledge to other volunteers. He even provides extra hours when there are outstanding jobs needing attending. He is an inspiration due to his beliefs in the environment generally. He has been a leader and teacher in environmental management for many years.

Unsung Hero/es

Rotary Club of Burnside Inc.

In the early 1990s David Harvey a member of the Rotary Club of Burnside, initiated an environmental project in conjunction with the Burnside Council to revegetate a disused quarry and council rubbish dump within Chambers Gully Park. During the 2020 lockdown, small groups constructed 22 new habitat boxes for birds and possums.

During this project a strong relationship developed between the various Council representatives and members of the Rotary Club of Burnside and from this initial project spawned other projects:

• revegetation of the Dashwood Gully rubbish dump
• creation of a ‘Seed Bank’ to propagate seeds for indigenous understory plants that are considered threatened or in danger.
• construction and installation of bird nesting boxes at Chambers Gully; and
• construction of bird nesting boxes and habitat boxes for bats and possums.

Highly commended: Rob Hilditch. Rob is a volunteer at the Burnside Men’s Shed where he uses and promotes the use of recycled material.

Waste Innovation

Leabrook Quality Meats

This Leabrook butcher has been extremely proactive in waste management and sustainability, reducing plastic consumption by switching to compostable packaging where possible, and recycling shopping bags instead of providing new ones for customers.

Highly commended: Aiden Fisk and Ivana Alvarado, two students from Glenunga International High School. Aiden and Alana created a fantastic concept, called Better World System, an app, powered by students, aimed at reducing pollution and rewarding correct waste allocation.

Climate Change Challenge

Dr Susan Marsden & Michael Szwarcbord

Susan and her partner Michael, who are both experienced gardeners, have in the past 15 years had to learn to adapt to the micro-climate and soils in their own locality and to address the impact of climate change. They have reduced their own footprints… and they have helped others along the way.

A large portion of the council’s annual budget is spent on waste management, including recycling. While it is cheaper than landfill the cost of recycling has increased markedly. This cost is passed on to residents through council rates. Council is never keen to increase rates, but the increasing cost of waste management makes that difficult.

Council's Coordinator Environmental Sustainability, Dr Phil Roetman, says you can help reduce the pressure on rates when you go shopping by thinking ‘circular’.

"What does that mean?" says Dr Phil. "A ‘circular economy’ describes an economy where resources are used again and again, rather than being thrown away."

What does that have to do with shopping? "There are more and more products on supermarket shelves that have recycled content in them," says Dr Phil. "When you buy recycled materials, you are participating in the circular economy. Buying recycled goods also has environmental benefits because it reduces the need for raw materials."

It is easier than it sounds. Below are some examples of common items that are available at local supermarkets and online.

Personal care items:

• Shampoo, conditioner and body wash with recycled plastic bottles
• Cosmetics with recycled plastic containers
• Toilet paper made from recycled paper

Cleaning Products:

• Dishwashing and laundry liquid with recycled plastic bottles
• Kitchen and bathroom cleaning products with recycled plastic bottles

Waste management:

• Bin liners made from recycled plastic
• Cat litter made from recycled paper

Food Storage:

• Aluminium foil made from recycled aluminium
• Food containers and drink bottles made from recycled plastic (available online)

Stationery:

• Printing paper, notebooks and cards made with recycled paper
• Pens made with recycled plastic

How does buying products with recycled content take pressure off council rates?

To explain this matter, we need to start at the bin.

Everything you put in a bin costs money to process. For example, when you put paper in a yellow bin it costs council to pick it up, transport it to a recycling facility, and separate it from other materials. Manufacturing companies then buy the paper and turn it into new products. The price that manufacturers pay for the paper can offset the cost of the processing. If the paper is sold to a manufacturer for $10 per tonne, but it cost $15 per tonne to collect and sort the paper, the overall process would be costing council ($5 per tonne in this example).

Lately, the value of recycled paper has been low, which means that the cost of the recycling process is not being completely offset. But the value of recycled paper does change, and if the value increases it would offset more of the processing cost. What would make this value increase? Greater demand. If there is more demand for a product, its value increases.

How can we create greater demand for recycled paper? We can all buy products made with recycled paper. As the demand increases, the value of the recycled paper will increase, and the sales of recycled paper to manufacturers will completely offset the costs of processing. The same is true for plastic, glass, metal and other recycled materials. The more recycled content we demand, the better. Dr Phil says we create demand for recycled materials when we buy them. "That is how we can all participate in the circular economy and help take the pressure off council rates."

In late 2012 the City of Burnside introduced the very successful 3 Bins and a Basket kerbside service. Since this introduction residents have been highly successful in diverting waste from landfill.

By mid-June 2020 the cumulative total of the reduction in waste-to-landfill volumes achieved in one year was 208 tonnes, the equivalent weight of almost 100 Toyota Landcruisers!

The kitchen basket and green organics bin combo has been a big contributor to this success. Designed to be stored on your kitchen bench, or in the cupboard under the sink, the basket is an easy way for you to collect your kitchen scraps, using compostable bags, and disposing of them in your green lid organics bin.

The organic waste is then used to make organic compost.

Two new baskets have been added to the suite and residents may now choose which bin they would like. All of the baskets are made from 100 per cent recycled plastic.

Burnside Council provides the tools to help you put your kitchen scraps in your green bin. Kitchen organics baskets and compostable bags (150 free bags per household per year) are available at the Civic Centre.

(Click on the 'New kitchen baskets' heading above to see the new look baskets)

The City of Burnside is participating in the Buying it Back LGA Circular Procurement Pilot Project with eight other councils to use our combined buying-power to significantly increase demand for recyclable materials in South Australia.

The aim of this project is to improve the sustainability of waste management practices, ensure the ongoing viability of our recycling system and, over time, reduce councils’ waste management costs. The project represents a significant step towards developing local markets and on-shore processing for recyclable materials within Australia and establishing a truly circular economy.

Councils taking part in the pilot project will, through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), establish systems and processes to:

• Prioritise recycled-content through the procurement process;
• Track the recycled-content purchased by weight; and
• At the end of the 2019/20 year and subsequent years, publicly report on the amount (number of tonnes) of recycled-content products and materials they have purchased under the MOU.

Burnside will seek to increase the purchasing of many products and materials with recycled content. most councils have elected to adopt a target in relation to plastic materials in particular. It is envisaged that following a successful initial set up in 2019/20, the participating councils will adopt rolling targets until they are buying-back recycled plastic materials equivalent to 50% of the weight of plastics collected in their council area.

Recycled products regularly purchased by local government bodies, that participating councils might consider procuring as part of the pilot project, include:

• Office stationary/paper;
• Fixtures (eg. street furniture, drinking fountains, bollards, fencing, decking, garden edging, planter boxes, fitness equipment, wheel stops, speed humps, bins, pipes, signage);
• Construction materials (recycled-content includes recycled asphalt, glass fines, plastic, rubber, toner); and
• Compost.

The outcomes are as follows:

The City of Burnside's waste and resource management subsidiary, East Waste, has led the way in the recovery and resurgence of recycling after the China Sword shutdown on imports of recycling.

East Waste, which collects more than 20 percent of Adelaide’s 120,000 tonnes of kerbside recycling, struck a ground-breaking recycling contract with resource recovery processor Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority (NAWMA).

Under the contract, the recyclables that East Waste collects from homes and commercial premises are processed at the lowest possible cost and with transparent public reporting on where recycling materials end up.

There also is an assurance that all East Waste recycling will be processed within Australia as a result of NAWMA’s commitment to achieve 100 percent onshore resource recovery processing.

This is a significant advance in the circular economy that minimises waste and makes the most of community resources.

East Waste is a subsidiary of the Cities of Burnside, Campbelltown, Mitcham, Norwood, Payneham & St Peters and Prospect, the Town of Walkerville and the Adelaide Hills Council. NAWMA is a subsidiary of the Cities of Playford and Salisbury and the Town of Gawler.

The two subsidiaries have agreed to an unprecedented contractual concept in which the risks and the rewards are shared. If gate prices for recycling rise, the benefit is shared and, if prices are depressed, the impost is also shared.

The agreement also provides transparency on where recycling materials end up - a topic that is difficult for private companies as they will not divulge information for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

With NAWMA, there is no such constraint so the partner councils can confidently and openly report to their communities. This transparency provides reassurance to our community that their recycling efforts are honoured all the way up the chain.