While Waste Op manager and Kobelco client Danny Gallagher is in the waste processing business, he prefers to see it as ‘resource recovery’ and has the goal of eventually keeping every single piece of waste he receives out of landfill.
“I decided that I needed to do something different and work towards a unique way of processing waste,” Gallagher says. “Through the processes and philosophy I have developed in handling waste, I am aiming to really make a difference to the environment.”
He’s doing this, he says, by processing the materials using world’s-best practices, pioneered in Europe, which he has discovered by travelling around the world in a quest for knowledge, and also by “working closely and in accordance with the waste regulatory body the NSW Environmental Protection Agency, department of planning and industry professionals”.
“My goal is that in the next 10 years not one ounce of the waste that comes into Waste Op will go into landfill,” he adds.
Gallagher has six Kobelco excavators sorting and preparing the material that comes into his facility in the Sydney suburb of Chester Hill. The fleet is made up of 35-tonne SK350LC-8 and S24-tonne SK235SR-2 diggers with various attachments including hydraulic rotating grapples, pulverisers, hydraulic hammers and magnets.
“The Kobelcos run economically and quietly,” Gallagher says. “They’re also ergonomically sound and comfortable for members of my team to operate all day. They’re a great machine and it was for that reason I wanted to really develop the relationship with Kobelco.
“Waste Op has a full service agreement with Sydney Truck & Machinery for the Kobelco excavators and the post-sales service has been so good we decided to sign a long-term deal,” he adds.
“To have a reliable team of people making sure the machines are running well means I don’t need to worry about it and I can focus on driving my business into the future.”
Gallagher has big plans for the business: “This time next year, I plan to be receiving around 400 tonnes of material through the gate every day. Within two years I would like to see that figure grow to around 1,200 to 1,500 tonnes.”
And what’s his vision for the future of waste processing?
“It’s exciting,” Gallagher says. “It’s a journey, not a destination, as new technologies and innovations are being born daily. It’s the ecological mining of the future; we will be using energy in the future from the renewable resource we recover from what is termed waste today…”
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