THE owner of Wodonga’s Greenchip Recycling has questioned why Transpacific Cleanaway is carting green waste hundreds of kilometres away for processing when there’s a plant ready and available just over the border — his.
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Terry Corrigan was also highly critical of the rubbish giant’s illegal grease-trap waste trials at a Kane Road site in Wodonga last year.
The Environment Protection Authority has fined Cleanaway more than $7000 for illegally collecting, transporting and depositing the waste in the trial, which was in preparation of its planned compost centre at Gerogery.
A development application for that centre was rejected by Greater Hume Council and a joint planning panel; Cleanaway appealed that decision but lost, however it is understood it planned to try again.
The Gerogery centre would be used to compost green waste collected from Albury’s new three-bin system — but with that facility still a distant possibility, Cleanaway is taking its waste to other areas like Wagga.
Mr Corrigan said his site, however, could be doing that job right now.
“I do exactly what they were doing in that trial and what they want to do out at Gerogery,” he said.
“Why are councils spending money carting waste into Albury, which is then taken elsewhere, when it could go to our site.”
Mr Corrigan said he used to take all green waste from Wodonga’s transfer station “for basically nothing”, until his own battle with the council “blew up”.
Greenchip only has the capacity to process 5000 tonnes of waste, but is licensed to process up to 25,000 tonnes.
A Cleanaway spokeswoman said the company had looked at all facilities available and that Wagga and “other chosen facilities” met their requirements.
She would not respond to further questions.