By Casey Neill
Greater Dandenong’s recycling waste is on track for a productive future.
The council’s engineering services director Julie Reid spoke to the Journal following a report from ABC program Four Corners highlighting huge stockpiles of glass intended for recycling.
“Polytrade was a big focus in that report. Polytrade was under a fair amount of scrutiny in that report,” she said.
The company has the council’s recycling contract.
“We just considered whether Polytrade had moved on since that time,” Ms Reid said.
“A lot has happened in the past few months.
“They introduced some advanced technology to sort glass.
“That certainly is in our Ordish Road municipal recycling facility at the moment.
“There was a flood of glass in the market and they weren’t getting as much for it, I believe.
“The new technology does something with the glass that allows it to be more palatable to overseas markets.”
Ms Reid said the council was watching the recycling space all the time so did not hold a special investigation following the program.
“The recycled market has been through lots of fluctuations,” she said.
“We watch it really carefully to make sure we’re still getting good value for money.
“Our contract does have a requirement for any of our contractors to meet industry standards.”
She said that people placing unrecyclable materials into their recycling bins did create problems for recyclers.
“We will always have a proportion that goes to landfill because it’s not recyclable,” she said.
“There’s always going to be people who do the wrong thing, or who don’t quite understand what they need to do.”
