When one thinks of Albury, they may picture the beautiful mountains surrounding the city, but they do not often consider the mountains of rubbish.
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The Albury Waste Management Centre is the 4th biggest landfill in NSW and each year takes about 200,000 tonnes of material.
To coincide with National Recycling Week, The Border Mail has taken a look at the role and history of the centre and how much waste the centre saves from landfill each year.
Albury Council team leader of resources Andrea Baldwin has been overseeing the centre since 2008.
She said back then, 90 per cent of the materials went to landfill.
"We realised if we didn't do anything it was going to close by about 2020," she said.
"But through the last 12 years of infrastructure and education we've been able to get another 30 to 40 years out of each of the different areas for disposal."
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The centre boasts a range of waste reduction technologies and initiatives, including a methane capture system, a solar powered electric vehicle charging station, a plasterboard recycling trial, maggots eating commercial food waste, a second hand re-use shop and recycling systems for a number of different materials.
Ms Baldwin said the centre is one of Australia's most advanced waste facilities, recycling about half of all materials it receives, but not many Border residents know just how special the facility is.
"I don't think they have a full appreciation of it," she said.
"It's probably because it's become quite normalised at home, so they've become used to this being in place for the time that I've been here."
But Ms Baldwin said the green practices of the Albury community weren't always commonplace for residents.
She said in 2015 when Albury introduced a food and garden organics or FOGO bin, she fielded thousands of phone calls from concerned residents experiencing "culture shock".
"People didn't like that... that was a really difficult time for the community," she said.
"They had to go through a lot of change, they needed to adapt.
"We have to get away from that throw away society and understand that a resource that we've got, whether that be plastic or compost of clothing or anything at all, you can actually bring it here and if you separate it we can actually find a future home for it."
Since then the centre has undergone significant development including the development of new roads and sheds to make recycling safer and easier.
Unique to waste management centres around the country, Albury's has a SMART (Sustainable Management and Resource Training) Centre, which is home to The Halve Waste Education Program.
Halve Waste aims to teach residents, school groups, new arrivals and business how they can reduce landfill and increase recycling.
Ms Baldwin said next year, the centre will build a material recovery facility for construction and demolition waste.
"We need to be continually finding ways and infrastructure and using our education and tapping into that circular economy that's around people at the moment and making sure that this centre is going to be here for a lot longer still," she said.
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