FAMILY-RUN brick manufacturing business Atlas Group has been awarded the City of Stirling’s waste disposal contract, worth more than $50 million.
The City of Stirling is Western Australia’s largest local government authority with more than 176,000 residents in 66,000 households and 10,000 home units.
The lucrative disposal contract, which went out for competitive tender, requires 65 per cent or more of the City of Stirling’s house hold waste to be diverted from landfill each year.
There is a three-year option for extension attached to the initial 10-year contract.
The award marks a significant milestone in waste disposal for Atlas’s award winning waste disposal wings
More importantly, Atlas was banking on the contract after privately investing more than $20 million into its innovative recycling and composting secondary waste treatment plant five years ago.
Key to the unique process is the City of Stirling’s single-bin collection service, which requires all household waste, except hazardous waste, to be placed into one 240 litre mobile garbage bin.
Atlas Group’s plant sorts the household wastes to recover organics, glass and plastic bottles, steel and aluminium cans. The organic waste is transferred to Atlas’s wheat and lupin farms at Calingiri.
City of Stirling spokesman Peter Beard said the contract was awarded to the Atlas Group because of the competitive rates offered and minimal environmental impacts.
It is understood a number of councils in the Perth metropolitan area had been watching to see if the Atlas Group would be re-awarded the contract because of the competitive rates offered with a single-bin system.
WA Greens waste management spokesman South Metropolitan MLC Jim Scott said his party was concerned about the single-bin system.
Mr Scott said the Greens believed the single-bin system offered the lowest standard in recycling.
