Inside a $15 million contaminated soil washing facility

Veolia’s Taylors Road Resource Recovery Precinct at Dandenong South in Victoria will soon be home to EarthSure’s $15 million contaminated soil washing technology facility, a joint venture between Veolia and Ventia that will see 160,000 t of contaminated soils and aggregates cleaned and reused every year.

The facility has also been supported by a $1.15 million grant from Sustainability Victoria as part of its Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund: Hazardous Waste Stream and is the latest addition to the precinct, which has seen it transform from a landfill to a resource recovery park.

The existing EarthSure thermal facility can already treat highly contaminated waste (Category A & B) through its direct fired thermal desorption process. Category A and B materials include commonly produced soils and waste resulting from key industrial processes, chemical storage and service stations.

However, less contaminated soils (Category C), which most commonly come from underground excavations and construction sites, require a separate treatment process.

The soil washing facility under construction aims to provide a solution for these lower contaminated soils and aggregates, enabling them to be reused. It uses treatment processes to clean materials such as organic and inorganic contaminants including oils, fuel, debris, organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals.

This project aims to be an environmentally effective, bulk solution for the Category C contaminated soils, which when combined with the thermal facility will divert 100% of this category soil from landfill, and close the circular economy loop by making the cleaned product available for reuse.

General Manager for Resource Recovery, Veolia Mark Globan said: “The new facility allows us to recover more polluted soils, such as sand, gravels and aggregates, by treating them to a level where they can be safely reused in a range of construction and civil engineering applications such as for backfilling, concrete, asphalt and more.

“This depollutes the environment, diverts on average more than 144,000 tonnes of soil from landfill every year and creates new opportunities for reuse, which means a considerable reduction in the need for quarried virgin materials,” Globan added.

“We estimate that, by itself, EarthSure will process equivalent to 25–30% of Victoria’s annually generated contaminated soils. This is a huge boost to Victoria’s sustainability targets and shows how businesses like ours play a role in ecologically transforming our society.”

Construction of the contaminated soil washing technology facility, designed to meet the spike in demand for soil treatment resulting from large-scale infrastructure projects, started in early July 2024 and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025. The new facility is part of Veolia’s global Green Up strategy aimed at accelerating positive environmental impact.

“One of the great advantages of EarthSure is that there is significant demand for aggregate, sand and road base produced by the facility,” said Ventia General Manager Environmental Services Adam Fletcher.

“This is an innovation that has been rapidly scaled up to commercial size and which will make a significant difference to the trajectory of soil reuse in Victoria. It is the perfect example of what we need to do in every part of the country ― deliver new and transformative infrastructure to create a sustainable future for our communities.”

Image credit: iStock.com/Sakorn Sukkasemsakorn