Recognising Victorian leaders in innovative sustainable practices, the Premier’s Sustainability Awards, now in its 18th year, promote the positive change brought to communities, by “reducing emissions, increasing resilience to the impacts of climate change and creating more liveable cities.”
They feature ten categories, ranging from Built environment to Health, Volunteering and both big and smaller players in the industry
For 2020, the 32-member panel of independent judges selected a company worthy of claiming not just one but of the total 10 awards.
Repurpose It (RPI) – run by Greek Australian George Hatzimanolis with co-founders Michael Wilson, Mark Centofanti, David Wilson, Abraham Pace, Elvis Centofanti and Anthony Van Schaik – has been recognised in both the ‘Innovative products or services’ and the ‘Small and medium enterprises’ category.
Trumpeted as an ‘Australian First’, their washing and recycling plant for construction and demolition waste was established in 2019 at a site in Epping, Melbourne’s north.
Within just a year of operation, RPI managed to divert “148,567 tonnes from landfill in its washing process and produced 141,000 tonnes of materials to substitute virgin extractive resource.”
Importantly, as estimated, for every tonne of contaminated soil, processed at the site, 168kg of CO2-e is diverted from the atmosphere.
The company has become the first in the country to recover resources from contaminated soil, and has partnered with both the private sector and government, following product accreditation, including in road construction projects and use of recycled glass and sand.
“As we are renewing the infrastructure, we generate waste. There are a lot of materials that can be recovered. Our vision when setting up the business was about investing in technology that could recover those precious resources,” Mr Hatzimanolis had told Neos Kosmos in an interview last year.
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