Port Stephens Waste Management Composting Facility

Port Stephens Waste Management Composting Facility is an Alternative Waste Treatment project located in Raymond Terrace, just north of Newcastle in New South Wales. It was registered in June 2013 and covers an unspecified facility area. The project operates out of the Veolia Raymond Terrace Resource Recovery Park. The surrounding Port Stephens region is known for a mixture of coastal urban development, nature conservation, forestry, and grazing. The area experiences moderate to high coastal rainfall, and local soil types generally consist of Chromosols, alluvial clays, and coastal sands.

Alternative Waste Treatment (AWT) projects involve diverting mixed solid waste away from traditional landfills to specialized processing facilities. By utilizing enclosed composting technology instead of allowing organic waste to decay anaerobically in a landfill, the facility significantly reduces the amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

This project originally operated under a now-revoked Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) method for avoiding emissions from legacy waste, before successfully transitioning to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative-Alternative Waste Treatment) Methodology Determination 2015 in March 2015. Another interesting note is that the project secured a carbon abatement contract (CAC702529) with the Clean Energy Regulator in April 2015, which has since been successfully completed. Today, the site continues to play a central role in the organics processing and waste management strategy for Port Stephens Council and surrounding areas.