Australian Landfill Finds New, Productive Use for Leachate

Leachate can create a lot of issues for landfills and locals if it’s not maintained and removed properly, but one landfill in Australia is using leachate in its recycling plans.

In West Nowra, Australia, the West Nowra Recycling and Waste Depot, which is the largest of the local council’s ten waste facilities, is taking a new innovative approach to recycling its leachate and finding a positive use for it.

The facility will clean up and use water from the landfill’s leachate pond, using Australian-developed PFAS-removing technology and a constructed wetland, to pump water into the glass processing facility. The water will be used to wash the glass before the glass is recycled into materials such as asphalt, concrete, pipe bedding, drainage material, sand blasting, and green ceramics.

Then, the water is returned to the leachate pond.

“We’re looking at utilizing the leachate waters to do other things and eventually become closed-loop water use on site,” Shoalhaven water operations coordinator Peter Windley says. “The water from the pond’s going to come in here, this unit will take the PFAS out and it will be pumped up into a constructed wetland to clean up the water using natural reed filters, it gets pumped to out our glass recycling facility, washes the glass, and around we go.”

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