Turning waste into gold

Millions of tons of unwanted waste spewed out by Australia’s power stations, mineral processing plants and municipalities can be re-used to create fertility, health, wealth, beauty and abundance.

Professor Richard Haynes of CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE) and the University of Queensland told the CleanUp 09 conference in Adelaide of striking progress in developing new uses for substances which have become a real headache for society to dispose of.

“A major thrust of our work is to transform industrial and municipal wastes that nobody wants into an environmentally friendly opportunity to make viable and marketable products,” he says.

Research at CRC CARE has included co-composting green waste with inorganic substances such as coal fly ash and organic resources such as grease trap waste, poultry manure and biosolids.

Prof Haynes team has also investigated a wide range of inorganic wastes such as steel slag, blast furnace slag, coal fly and bottom ash, red mud, water treatment sludge as well as organic sources such as tree bark, sugar mill mud, spent brewery yeast and prawn processing waste.

Prof Haynes says some of society’s worst waste problems can be turned into assets, helping to provide food, fertility and healthier landscapes while saving water and preventing pollution.