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[January 2008]
Aussie Brickmaker's Recycling Initiative Wins Award
Midland Brick is proud to have won the 2007 WA Environment Awards, in the Resources and Waste category.
The win recognised the recycling programme that has been developed where all imperfect and waste product made on Midland Brick's Middle Swan clay brick manufacturing site in Western Australia is now recycled.
The waste product is crushed and added (in varying optimal percentages) to the clay mix for internal bricks, without affecting the strength or technical specifications of the finished product. Internal research found that there was capacity to accept more of this waste, so Midland Brick initially developed a test programme to collect commercial building site waste with Pindan Construction, which has been performing well.
As the programme expanded, Midland Brick partnered with demolition company, Capital Demolition, to return clean brick waste, which has reportedly been a huge success.
Residential building sites were also a target area for recycling and, to enable collection of waste from these sites, Midland Brick set up a service known as the 'Midland Magpies', after magpies’ habit of collecting objects. This is a team of two staff who visit residential building sites to collect waste bricks, with a bobcat and 8-tonne truck, after the Midland Brick project team have liaised with builders.
In the 2006/2007 financial year the brick recycling project recycled over 7,500 tonnes of bricks – equivalent to a staggering 2.71 million bricks, or 140 average double brick homes. This far exceeded the target of 6,000 tonnes.
The general public are also encouraged to return waste bricks and pavers to Midland Brick's Middle Swan, Cannington, Jandakot, Osborne Park and Joondalup sites for recycling.
The most important aspect of this programme is that the brick waste is 'clean' – that is, it does not have any foreign materials such as timber, paper, plastic, metal or excessive mortar in it.
This recycling initiative not only saves consumers and builders money in tip fees, but helps to reduce the amount sent to landfill and the volume of new clay resources required.
This wasn’t the company’s first success in this award scheme: it was awarded a special commendation in the 2005 WA Environment Awards for its work to save the endangered Western Swamp Tortoise and was a finalist in 2006 for its recycling efforts.
www.midlandbrick.com.au
ENDS