By Alesha Capone
A Laverton business that received a major prize in the Premier’s Sustainability Awards last year has urged companies, community groups and volunteers to enter the 2021 competition.
The awards aim to recognise and celebrate Victorians who are leading the way to a sustainable future.
Alex Fraser’s Sustainable Supply Hub (the hub) received a gong in the Large Business Award category of the 2020 awards.
The hub recovers waste to recycle into high-quality end products needed for infrastructure development and supplies products to the construction industry.
The hub managing director Peter Murphy said the sustainability awards helped to raise the profile of the industry and inform the public of the good and practical things happening in the sector.
Mr Murphy said receiving the award was also “good recognition for our employees who do a great job”, especially as they worked through the lockdowns last year and adapted to COVID-19 pandemic requirements.
The hub, which is based on a 34-hectare site, employs about 110 people.
It is one of the world’s largest recycling facilities in terms of the volume of waste it processes.
“We recycle about one million tonnes of construction and demolition materials every year, and about half a million tonnes of glass from kerbside collections,” Mr Murphy said.
“We use this to produce asphalt, with a high recycled content, to build greener roads.”
He said that in doing so, the hub eliminated the need for a lot truck movements on local roads.
“If we weren’t recycling this, it would be headed out of town to landfill and then have to be trucked back in to quarries,” he said.
The hub’s annual environmental outcomes include 200,000 tonnes of glass waste recycled into sand, saving one million kilograms of carbon dioxide, and 390,000 tonnes of high recycled asphalt, saving 3.3 million kilograms of carbon dioxide.
Mr Murphy said there was “huge demand” for the hub’s recycled products in the west, including its aggregates, asphalt, road base and sand.
“I’m not sure people realise the scale of it, it’s in everything from footpaths to roads,” he said.
Applications for the Premier’s Sustainability Awards 2021 will close at 5pm on Friday, July 30. Details: www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/psa
