Waste and recycling in aged care facilities
Prepared by Aged and Community Services Australia in partnership with Green Industries SA and Rawtec Pty Ltd, funded through the GISA Business Sustainability Program. September 2018.
Summary published
Twenty-six South Australian aged care facilities were reviewed across 2017 and 2018. Waste generation ranged from 0.85 to 7.83 kilograms per residential bed per day — a ninefold spread between the best and worst performer.
Landfill diversion ranged from under 1% to 77%, with the typical facility at 40%. That is the whole argument of the guide: the gap between a typical facility and a good one is operational, not technological. Nobody needs new equipment to move from 40% to 77%.
The financial driver was the levy. The SA waste levy went from about $28 a tonne in 2014–15 to about $100 in 2019–20, and metropolitan landfill gate rates reached $130 to $150 a tonne including levy — against $30 to $50 a tonne to send food waste to a commercial composter.
Waste per bed per day, best to worst
Landfill diversion range
SA facilities reviewed
Landfill reduction achieved at RSL Care SA
What the 26 facilities showed
Continence products are the biggest single stream
Even at the better practice facility, continence product waste is 30.3% by weight, followed by dry materials sent to energy recovery at 29.4%. Any diversion plan that ignores those two is working on the remaining 40%.
Organics are a fifth of it, and cheaper to divert than to bury
Food waste is 11.8% and garden waste 9.7% at the better practice facility. Food waste to a commercial composter costs $30–$50 a tonne against $130–$150 to landfill. The saving is the difference, per tonne, every week.
One facility cut landfill 42% and held costs flat
RSL Care SA’s War Veterans’ Home went from 44.8 to 25.7 tonnes a year to landfill between 2011 and 2017, and food waste from 7.3 to 5.1 tonnes — a 30% reduction. Waste costs stayed flat through a $74 per tonne levy increase, which is the more impressive number.
Ten separate streams is achievable on a single site
RSL Care SA separates ten, including confidential paper, container deposit containers, scrap metal and e-waste. Facilities that assume this is only possible at scale are looking at one site that does it.
Container deposit is revenue sitting in the landfill bin
Eligible containers are 1.3% by weight at the better practice facility, at 10 cents each. Small in tonnage, and the only stream on the list that pays.
Procurement is where diversion is won or lost
The guide’s seven-step tendering process and procurement checklist target the contract, on the basis that the service you can run is the service you contracted for. Bin signage comes second.
Tenancies undermine facility-wide performance
Cafes, hairdressers and allied health services operating inside a facility need waste segregation written into the tenancy contract, or the facility’s numbers reflect their bins as well as its own.
The tools it comes with
Estimates baseline waste generation and recycling, then benchmarks the facility against the others reviewed — which is what turns “we should do better” into a number.
Four sections that walk a facility through identifying opportunities and building an implementation plan, area by area.
So the outcome of the assessment is a document with owners and dates rather than a list of ideas.
Task by task through preliminary review, tender, evaluation and contracting.
Separate sections for kitchen and servery, operations and maintenance, offices and administration, residential and public areas, and tenancies. Each one sorted against the waste hierarchy.
The per-bed-per-day figures exclude waste from renovations and construction and demolition, and exclude large events and temporary activities. The guide “does not claim to be exhaustive” and notes that “factors are subject to change and readers should make their own enquiries to confirm the current situation” — the levy rates in it now understate the current position. Reference to a particular product or company “does not constitute an endorsement”.
Related work
Other guidance for organisations managing their own waste.
The full guide runs to about 40 pages and includes the area-by-area guidance, the bin colour and size reference and the RSL Care SA case study.
Working on something like this?
Most of our projects start with someone inside an organisation who already knows what needs to change and needs the evidence to back it in. If that is you, we would like to hear from you.