Circular Economy Tour
On 25 March, 33 people from across the IWN Membership hopped on a bus and joined the second IWN Circular Economy tour.
Our first stop was the Yarra Valley Water ReWaste facility at Wollert. The state of the art facility takes 30,000 tonnes of organic material per year comprising of solid material from Melbourne’s produce markets and liquid material from food manufacturers. The plant converts this once waste into 7,500MWh of clean electricity per year and a nutrient rich digestate.
YVW are currently constructing another facility at Lilydale due to open later this year. This facility will have capacity to process 50,000 tonnes of food waste and produce 13,000MWh of clean electricity per year.
These innovative facilities will divert 80,000 tonnes of landfill and enable Yarra Valley Water to reach net zero emissions, reduce operational costs and keep pressure off customers’ water bills.
Our second stop was the Wollert Community Farm situated on the buffer land around the Aurora Sewage Treatment Plant and adjacent to the ReWaste facility.
The Farm is a partnership and collaboration between YVW, Whittlesea Community Connections, Melbourne Polytechnic and the City of Whittlesea. It includes an environmental education hub and local food system that aims to restore nature and ensure that local community members can live and eat well.
Through this partnership YVW provides the land as well as access to recycled water, Whittlesea Community Connections provide programs and activities that help people break the cycle of disadvantage and Melbourne Polytechnic (the local TAFE) brings teaching expertise and motivated students.
Our final stop was the Yarra Ranges Council Biochar Facility, operated by Earth Systems at Lysterfield.
Biochar is a form of charcoal for addition to soil providing many benefits including:
- Improved soil structure
- Improved soil water-holding capacity
- Increased crop yields
- Reduced greenhouse gas emissions
The facility commenced operations at Lysterfield Waste Transfer Site in late-2023 to process woody and green materials generally resulting from storm damage and powerline vegetation management. The facility also processes decommissioned pallets which are shredded on site.
The biochar produced is available for sale to farmers, horticulturalists and home gardeners.
The Yarra Ranges Council said that by making biochar from woody waste and other plant material, they are stabilising carbon that was absorbed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis when the plants were growing. It’s a way of removing carbon from the carbon cycle.
I’d like to shout out to Kerryn Lester-Smith, Michael Thomas and Isobel Decru for all their most excellent work in making the Circular Economy tours such a success.
We are currently planning our next Circular Economy Tour for a few months time, stay tuned for details.
WIOA Vic 2025 – A Great Success
Last week, Issy and I headed to Bendigo for the 2025 WIOA Conference. It was a tremendous success with a record number of visitors and 180+ exhibitors. We had some terrific conversations and unearthed a few trial opportunities. Congratulations to Dean, Glenn, Ann and all the WIOA Team on a record breaking success.
Backing onto the outstanding success of last year’s Operators Trial Competition, we ran the competition again with significant interest and engagement from operators and exhibitors. The winner of the $20,000 funded trial was announced at the awards dinner on the final night of the conference.
The winning trial was separately submitted by both Cameron Patrick from Coliban Water, and Vincent Encena and Samuel Leong from Greater Western Water to trial the Hydroflow technology by Hydropath to prevent struvite formation and calcification in centrifuge lines. Congratulations! The prize will be used to purchase a device for each organisation to trial so we can compare use cases.
Champions Day
The IWN Champions Program is a 2-year program for emerging leaders from IWN member organisations. The Champions play a critical role in connecting their organisations to shared knowledge on innovative technologies and IWN trials conducted within the sector. The formal learning element is a curated self-directed program from Mindshop. The Champions also participate in 1:1 coaching to grow themselves, their career and their presence as an IWN Champion.
We bring the Champions together twice a year for a 1-day workshop, which this year has the theme of intrapreneurship. Cameron Geddes from The Geddes Group facilitates the Champions Program – we thank Cam for his passion, energy and dedication to the Champions program for the past 10 years.
In March, 8 Champions completed their 2-year program. Well done to Ben McCallum (Barwon Water), Kate Bardy (North East Water), Julian Tully (South East Water), Stephen McCormick (Yarra Valley Water), Alex Peel (DEECA), Alex Rowan (Greater Western Water), Erinne Carey (Lower Murray Water) and Martin Ankor (TasWater). We also said good luck to Mel Samaraweera (Coliban Water) who is taking a break for family leave (congrats Mel!).
We also welcomed 9 new Champions – Jenny Perks (Barwon Water), Kendal Krause (North East Water), Sandy Xu (South East Water), Anthony Makati (Yarra Valley Water), Betty Alegria (DEECA), Nick Raffaele (Greater Western Water), Darryl Vines (Lower Murray Water), Samantha Sawyer (TasWater) and Aamir Idris (Coliban Water).
I’d encourage all IWN Members to reach out to their Champion and invite them to talk to your team about IWN and the opportunities for innovation and technology. Just remember, today’s BAU was yesterday’s innovation.
Gas Stream Workshop
In December 2024, DEECA released Victoria’s Renewable Gas Directions Paper for comment. https://engage.vic.gov.au/victorias-renewable-gas-future
The Directions Paper outlines that the Victorian Government’s policy approach for consultation is to establish the Industrial Renewable Gas Guarantee, a renewable gas target and mechanism, as well as related policy details. This model is for consultation only, with final scheme design subject to stakeholder consultation and government decision-making processes. Source: Engage Victoria Website
In response to this paper, the IWN Circular Economy Program Gas Stream held a workshop at Barwon Water’s offices to identify and discuss the opportunities the paper opens for our sector. 23 people attended from across the sector. We very much thank John Day, Deepak Mallya, Michael Thomas and Kerryn Lester-Smith for their great work on this tremendous initiative. The workshop was framed with a presentation by DEECA on the Victorian Renewable Gas Directions Paper, followed by presentations from the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group to overview network, hydrogen, and biogas projects, a Gas Project Developer to share learnings about what projects stack up, and Origin Energy to understand how a gas retailer operates.
The workshop then culminated by identifying three key IWN projects to move forward with. They are:
- Gas for electricity vs direct injection into the grid
- CO2 recovery and utilisation
- Circular Economy planning tool and partnerships
For further information on the projects or to be involved in the IWN Circular Economy Gas Stream, please contact John Day or Deepak Mallya at enquiries@iwn.org.au.
March 2025
In-Stream – Victoria’s Water Industry Innovation Festival
IWN is partnering with Isle Utilities to create an exciting new initiative for the Victorian Water Industry.
In-Stream, Victoria’s Water Industry Innovation Festival, is a 12-month cycle of co-creation and collaboration between the public and private sectors to actively generate real, fit-for-purpose solutions to the opportunities and challenges facing the Victorian water industry.
Expression of Interest (EOI) documents were sent out on 3rd March for organisations to register their interest in being part of the initiative and leading a challenge.
If you are keen to learn more, please register at this link https://events.humanitix.com/in-stream-sponsors-eoi-briefing and we will send you the EOI documents and an invite to the online EOI briefing on 7 March at 12 PM.
Smart Water Networks Forum (SWAN)
IWN and SWAN have recently reaffirmed our collaboration MoU and will establish some joint initiatives in the coming months. The first of these will be a webinar that will explore Data to Decision Making for the Water Sector, jointly developed by SWAN and the IWN Data and Analytics Program. We will provide more details in our next newsletter.
The SWAN Annual Conference will be held in Berlin from 27 to 29 May. For more information head on over to https://swan-forum.com/events/swan-2025/.
Gas Stream (with John Day and Deepak Mallya)
The IWN Gas Stream is focused on unlocking opportunities in biogas, hydrogen, CO₂, N₂O, and O₂ to support decarbonization, emissions reduction, and resource recovery in the water sector. Over the past few months, significant progress has been made in shaping its direction and engaging with key stakeholders.
- Victorian Renewable Gas Directions Paper Response – On behalf of Victorian water utilities, the Gas Stream submitted a response to DEECA’s Victorian Renewable Gas Directions Paper, advocating for sector-wide collaboration. Watch this space.
- Upcoming Gas Stream Workshop – March 21, 2025. To drive actionable outcomes, a full-day workshop will bring together representatives from Victorian water utilities, DEECA and industry leaders to discuss on opportunities and identify key IWN Gas Stream projects to advance in 2025-26. Please reach out to John Day and / or Deepak Mallya for more information.
The Gas Stream continues to explore and develop innovative approaches to integrate renewable gases into the water industry, ensuring a more sustainable and low-carbon future. Stay tuned for further updates!
Loo Lab comes to SE Water
The Loo Lab is a living lab developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Nutrients in a Circular Economy Research Hub (ARC NiCE Hub) in partnership with South East Water to research and trial urine nutrient recovery and transformation to liquid fertiliser.
The pilot plant captures and diverts urine to the mini treatment plant within the trailer where the urine is transformed into an ammonium nitrate liquid fertiliser that supports healthy plants and soil.
You can see the Loo Lab in Sydney at the upcoming Climate Action Week from March 11 to March 14 following which it will relocate to Melbourne to begin public demonstration and engagement within South East Water’s local community.
