Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund: Hazardous Waste – Round 3: Information bulletin

Visual Summary

This video shows a PowerPoint presentation conveying information about the Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund:​ Hazardous Waste – Round 3. This presentation is accompanied by a video of the person speaking.

The 3 speakers are:

• John Polhill, Manager - Infrastructure Partnerships, Sustainability Victoria
• Sujata Doctor, Program Lead - Infrastructure Partnerships, Sustainability Victoria
• Caroline de Santi, Team Lead- Infrastructure Partnerships, Sustainability Victoria

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund:​

Hazardous Waste – Round 3. Information Session, 20 June 2023, Sustainability Victoria’]

[The visuals during this live event are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Sujata Doctor:

Hello everyone. Welcome to all our attendees and thank you for joining us this morning to hear about Round 3 of the Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund, Hazardous Waste Stream - Round 3.

I would like to start off this session with an acknowledgement to country.

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri clan of the Kulin Nations as the traditional custodians of the lands from which I'm joining you today, and I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging. I also pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the lands from which all of you are joining us today. For over 60,000 years, our First Nations people have been pioneers in the circular economy through their connection to Earth, and their deep knowledge and understanding of the role humans can play within its intricate systems, to care for and regenerate it. In many indigenous cultures, children are taught from a very early age to take only what is needed, leave some behind so it can regenerate itself, and to think seven generations ahead, which is wisdom that we can draw upon for inspiration.

I just wanted to make sure that all of you can hear me, and also a reminder that we will be recording this session.

The purpose for today's session is to give participants an overview of the recently opened Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund, Hazardous Waste - Round 3. From here on, I will refer to it as the Fund. On the agenda today we have an overview of Victoria's circular economy policy, Recycling Victoria: a new economy, an overview of the Hazardous Waste funding program, and then we'll take a deep dive into Round 3, focusing on guidelines, eligibility, application process, and timeline. This will be followed by Q and A. You can see the Q and A symbol on the top right-hand side of your screen, so please feel free to post questions throughout the presentation. We will answer them as we go, and at around 11:45, when we conclude with the presentation, we will ask the remaining questions. Please also give a thumbs up to questions that are already posted, and you'd like to hear an answer to. We will prioritize questions with the maximum likes.

For any questions that we are unable to answer today, we will be compiling that into a Q and A, and we'll make it available, along with the recording of this presentation via the Information Bulletin on the grants page of SV's website. This will take approximately a week, which will give us time to have the video transcribed and captioned. I would now like to hand over to John Polhill, Manager Infrastructure Partnerships, who will provide you with an overview of funding from the policy perspective.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Victoria’s circular economy plan overview’]

John Polhill:

Thanks, Sujata. The next few slides, I'm just going to run you through the policy settings attached to the Fund. So, the Recycling Victoria: a new economy is a $380 million, 10-year action plan to fundamentally transform our recycling sector, reduce waste, create thousands of jobs, and set Victoria up for a more sustainable future. Circular economy will drive investment in jobs, and increase the processing capacity of waste in the recycling industry. The reforms will be delivered alongside investment and innovation as a comprehensive package to provide reliable services and a strong industry for the future, and will make these services meet and exceed community expectations. The Fund contributes to two key commitments in the plan, and that is to increase the use of recycled materials and support the safe and effective high-risk and hazardous waste management. The focus of the package is to accelerate and stimulate investment in infrastructure for the increased recovery of priority materials, including hazardous waste, and manage those in line with the waste hierarchy.

The Victorian government's contribution to the Fund has been established under the Recycling Victoria plan to respond to goal three and four of the Circular Economy goals, which is to recycle more resources, diverting them from landfill, and reduce harm from waste. The Fund's intention is to stimulate investment in priority infrastructure to support increased recycling across the state, to ensure that we have a viable local capacity and capability network to improve the way hazardous waste is managed and produce quality materials that can be used as inputs in manufacturing of new products. So, my branch looks after the Industry and Infrastructure Development Package, which is a $107 million grant package with four waste streams. Haz waste is one of those, and it currently has $9.2 million available until mid-2025. $4.7 million has been allocated under previous rounds, leaving 4.5 million available for Round 3. I'll hand you back to Sujata now to take you through the specifics of the Fund. Thank you.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Fund overview’ ]

Sujata Doctor:

Thank you John. Let's talk about Round 3 now. The second round was opened in 2021, and targeted low-level contaminated soils and reportable priority wastes. Projects are currently being implemented under this round. In this Round 3, the funding opportunities are open to projects that manage or recover low-level contaminated soils, reportable priority wastes, and specified priority wastes as defined by the EPA Victoria. Within our guidelines, a link has been provided to the EPA website to assist participants in determining whether the wastes for their project are eligible. A key thing to note is, that in this round we are including four specified priority wastes, in addition to reportable priority wastes. There are four fund objectives, and every project must meet at least two of these objectives.

Increasing the recovery and local reprocessing of hazardous waste and managing this material in line with the waste hierarchy. I will touch upon the waste hierarchy in the next slide.

Increase the use and quality of recycled materials for re-manufacturing and to make new products.

Increase economic development opportunities such as jobs, economic performance, and growth precincts.

Reduce the amount and impact of waste going to landfill.

You can see on the slide the waste hierarchy that I just referred to. Now separate to the four objectives that we went through, there are four outcomes specific to the hazardous waste stream and the program.

Diversion of wastes from Category B landfill disposal, increased diversion of low-level contaminated soils from landfill disposal, increased recovery of hazardous wastes for reuse, recycling, or energy recovery, and similarly improved management of hazardous wastes for reuse, recycling, and energy recovery. I will spend a couple of minutes talking through these outcomes now, noting that I'm using industry specific wording, including reference to hazardous waste specific landfills and their categories. These outcomes have been designed with consideration to the waste hierarchy shown on this screen.

As mentioned on the previous slide, management of wastes in line with the waste hierarchy is also a Fund objective. This waste hierarchy indicates that within each outcome where projects are able to demonstrate higher order management pathways, this will be considered favourably over low order management pathways. With respect to diversion of hazardous waste from Category B landfill likely into Category C or Category D landfills, diversion to these landfills is viewed favourably for the same reason. Just a note, that projects to increase landfill airspace will not be considered but infrastructure may be co-located at landfills. Additionally, projects undertaken to solely comply with regulation or a regulatory notice or order are not eligible under any of the outcomes, including Outcome D, improved management of hazardous waste for reuse, recycling, and energy recovery.

What are the materials that we are targeting in Round 3? As mentioned, reportable priority wastes, this includes all reportable priority wastes including solvents and low-level contaminated soils, and specified priority wastes. These are limited to the four priority wastes listed here: treated timbers, biosolids, lithium batteries, brominated and flame-retardant plastics that we commonly refer to as BFRs. I will note here again that the addition of the four priority wastes in Round 3 is new. There were no priority wastes included in Round 2.

The funding amount available is $4.5 million for Round 3 for industry, and this includes for-profit, and not-for-profit organizations, and local government. Applicants are required to meet minimum cash co-contribution. Industry must co-contribute at least $2 for every $1 funded, and local government must contribute at least $1 for every $1 funded. I will note here that investment leverage will be a key consideration as part of the application assessments. Higher investment from the applicant will be looked upon more favourably. There is no funding cap per project, which means there is no minimum or maximum funding request.

I will now go into the eligibility criteria, and we'll start with the Who criteria. So who will be funded? Eligible applicants must have a current Australian Business Number, an ABN, or have a joint venture partner with an ABN. It must be a business or a local government that has existing facilities in Victoria, or are proposing a new facility to be located in Victoria. I'll just remind you that business includes for-profit and not-for-profit organisations. They must have been operating in Australia for a minimum of two years by the application closing date, which is the 25 July 2023. They must meet or exceed the minimum co-contribution requirements, and agree to comply with Sustainability Victoria's grant funding agreement terms and conditions, and terms of participation in the grants program. There is a new requirement for applicants applying for funding of more than $500,000 ex GST, to submit a Fair Jobs Code certificate number or certificate application number with their grant application. The guidelines provide a link to where you can find more information about this requirement, including the application process to obtain a certificate number.

At the end of the grant application form, there is a section with check boxes for applicants to confirm that they meet all of the eligibility criteria. Here I'm referring to the application form for the funding round. Moving on and continuing ... rather continuing with who will be funded, further to what we've already gone through, the applicant's project partners and participants must demonstrate financial capability to undertake the project. If you are a not-for-profit organisation, you will also need to provide the source of your funding. Projects must be completed by the 31 May 2025, must not have failed to meet program timelines with other SV funding programs without sufficient reason, must not have failed to address an environmental safety or workplace breach, must not have an environmental or safety breach not yet resolved, must not have a current industrial relations investigation or prosecution.

Moving on to what will be funded. Project requirements include projects to be located in Victoria to meet the eligibility criteria, and two or more of the fund objectives listed in the guidelines. And as we have already spoken about earlier, meet regulatory and planning requirements or comply with regulation or a regulatory notice or order, demonstrate a need for Victorian government support, and be commissioned and operational by 31 of May 2025. Projects should maximize public value and private sector co-investment, and requested funding must be directly related to the project. I will talk a little bit more about eligible expenses on the next slide.

So, eligible expenses for this funding round include capital purchases, installation and commissioning of infrastructure or equipment, pre-construction activities which is typically your site preparation such as site clearing, earthworks or site accessibility works directly associated with the installation of the new equipment, construction modification of buildings to house the new equipment. It is also worth noting here that short-term storage infrastructure will only be funded for projects targeting both storage and recovery infrastructure.

What won't be funded? So just like we have eligible expenses, we have things that are ineligible that we won't be funding. Projects must not have commissioned before signing the funding agreement. Be commissioned, electronically or hydraulically connected or have commenced operating equipment before signing the funding agreement. Applicants may however, after submitting their application and at their own risk, order or purchase equipment, commence civil works and, or assemble infrastructure. Projects must not be undertaken solely to comply with regulation or regulatory notice or order. This applies to all of the outcomes including outcome d, as we've seen earlier, the improved management of hazardous waste. Projects must not be undertaken to solely increase landfill airspace. They must not focus on hazardous waste categories not listed in the guidelines, meaning projects may be classified as low-level contaminated soil, or as a reportable priority waste, or specified priority waste based on EPA classifications. Finally, projects must not have received funding for the same activities from different sources.

I would like to note here that, again, the guidelines provide details and conditions for applicants who may want to commence projects earlier, and at their own risk.

There are specific expenses which the government funding cannot be applied to. A full list of these ineligible expenses is provided in the guidelines, and these include expenses such as in-kind contribution, requests for assistance in managing cashflow, ongoing operational costs, business case development and management costs and so on.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Assessment criteria’]

I will now move on to speak about the assessment criteria. Providing you an overview of the assessment criteria by which the assessment panel will score your application. You can read the detail in the guidelines on our website. The application is structured in a way that makes it clear which criteria each question falls under. For all applications, questions across all of the criteria, it is really important that you support your statements with evidence. Your project may be technologically and financially viable, have fantastic potential outcomes, and a great project team to deliver it, but without supporting evidence there is no way for SV to assess the validity of those statements and it makes it difficult for our assessors to give you a high mark. I'll provide some examples of what we are looking for as we go through the criteria. It is also important to note that we can't come back to you and ask for additional information. We can only ask for clarification of information that you have already submitted.

Now let's go through the four assessment criteria, and we'd start with the What criteria. This criteria is weighted at 30%. Under this criteria, you will be asked to demonstrate the project meets two or more of the fund objectives, demonstrate the project is viable and investment ready, and this refers to things like technology, infrastructure, feedstock, et cetera. Demonstrate that the objectives of the project also align with the strategic priorities of your organisation. You are the experts in the market, and we want you to tell us what is going to achieve a significant outcome rather than us giving you a very narrow definition. This will depend on a number of factors including the specific hazardous waste stream you are targeting, the available feedstock, and current end markets.

We have some suggested considerations, and these could be included in your application. Does your project present significant value for money or leverage additional investment? Will your project have the capacity and capability to service multiple states? Does your project address a difficult to recover or difficult to manage waste or a gap in the market? Does your project support a new end market? So these are some suggestions and considerations for you as you are completing your applications.

The next criteria is the How criteria and this is weighted at 30%. The How criteria, under the How criteria, applicants will be assessed on how well the applicant has demonstrated viability to successfully deliver the project including financial viability demonstrated through financial assessment. The kinds of supporting evidence we would be looking for here is proof of site ownership or a lease agreement if you have secured the site, council planning and approval, EPA licenses or permits, and a detailed risk management and a monitoring and evaluation framework to measure the outcomes of your project.

The Who criteria weighted at 20%, under this the panel, the assessment panel will be looking for applications that demonstrate the applicant's, including project partners and participant's capability and capacity to successfully deliver the project. If for example, your organisation or project partners have experience delivering similar infrastructure projects, we would be looking for details on what these projects were about, any challenges or setbacks in delivery and how these were overcome, and what were the project outcomes. More generally, we would also be looking for project management, monitoring and evaluation processes that you may have in place, as well as stakeholder engagement that you have already undertaken or are planning to undertake.

And finally we come to the Why criteria which is also weighted at 20%. Under this criteria, projects will be assessed on why the project is needed, why government financial assistance is needed, what benefits the project will provide, and what it aligns to, the priorities of the ... what benefits the projects will provide and how it aligns to the priorities of the government. Again, any statements and evidence you provide will be favourable for your application. In terms of the need for government financial assistance we recognize there is a conflict here, in terms of projects needing to be viable and simultaneously also demonstrating the need for financial assistance. So the key here is to explain potential outcomes with and without government support. For example, the impacts on capacity or delivery timing if financial assistance is provided. In addition to the scoring done to rank the projects based on assessment criteria we have just gone through, the assessment panel may overlay diversity considerations such as geographical spread, and good spread across the sector as well.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Due diligence’]

Due diligence is a really important aspect of the assessment process, where SV is required to complete due diligence on applications, and this is similar to when you would be applying for a bank loan or seeking private sector investment for your project. During these checks SV looks at any compliance issues, the financial viability of the applicant, adequate insurances, any conflicts of interest and delivery history with SV. The financial viability checks require applicants to provide financial information to a contracted third party to undertake a financial risk assessment. This is a mandatory requirement regardless of the size and the operating history of your business or your history with SV. We understand that this information is commercial in confidence and it will not be shared with any other parties. The results of these checks then form part of the risk-based assessment of the project.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘How to Apply’]

Let's now go into the application process. You need to ensure you are eligible to apply, and that your project meets the eligibility and the assessment criteria by thoroughly reading the guidelines. It would be helpful for you to understand the terms and conditions, the terms of participation, and the funding agreement itself. Planning, research and gathering information for your application as early as possible will give your application the best chance for success. Because of the potential scale of the grant, we have a fairly in-depth application form which will take some time to complete, so we ask that you start a bulk of your application no later than three weeks before the closing date. You will be using the SmartyGrants portal to complete your application, the system allows you to leave and go back to your application at any time. You will need to register or log in to SmartyGrants to start your application, review and complete the eligibility check as soon as possible to ensure your project is investment-ready and you have time to get support.

You can print a draft of your application with just your eligibility check and send it to Grants Enquiries if you would like to access support from our investment facilitation team. Make sure you complete all the questions and upload supporting documentation, and also remember to submit your Fair Jobs Code pre-assessment certificate number or certificate application number if applying for funding of more than $500,000. You must complete and submit your application via SmartyGrants by 11:59 pm on 25 July 2023. Late applications will not be accepted unless there are exceptional circumstances. Please do refer to the terms of participation in grants programs for more information. We would also like to suggest that you submit your application a few days early, just to make sure there are no last-minute technical issues which could kind of create ... delay the application coming through. If you need support with any of these steps that we have already gone through, you can contact Grants Enquiries. Contact details are available in our guidelines, and we will also provide them later in this presentation. Once you've submitted your application in SmartyGrants, you will receive an electronic acknowledgement from the system.

Improving the chances of your success. Please take time to read our guidelines. This is really critical, and in the past we have had instances where not all applicants have read through our guidelines before applying for the funding. We also recommend applicants engage with investment support services before submitting their application to ensure their project is investment-ready and set up for success. Sustainability Victoria offers an investment facilitation service for projects that build Victoria's resource recovery sector. This service can tell you what you need to have in place for your project and provide connections with an industry. More information is available on the SV website. We will also post a link to the page to make it easy for you to access.

What are the kind of things that you need to think about to be investment ready? Has your project plan or business case been internally approved? Do you have secure feedstock? Do you have secured end markets? Do you have a commitment in writing from your project participants? Do you have detailed risk management plan? If the answer to any of these questions listed here is a no, it doesn't mean that your project won't be funded, it means that you will need to consider how you can progress on these project elements and how you will address them in the application, including as part of the required risk assessment risk management plan. For example if you do not have secured feedstock, you should provide a detail on the availability of the required feedstock in the market, how you plan to secure this feedstock, any potential suppliers you may have approached, and any key dependencies in securing the feedstock.

The only exception here relates to any outstanding environmental workplace safety or industrial relations issues. If the answer to this is yes, you will need to detail in your application how you're going to be engaging with the relevant regulatory body, and any mitigation actions you are taking to resolve the issue or number of issues, if there are any.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Timeline’]

Just a reminder of the timelines. Applications are now open and they will close on the 25 July 2023 at 11:59 pm. So as I mentioned earlier, please make sure you submit your applications a bit earlier to make sure there are no last minute technical issues. We will be running one more information session on the 29 June 2023, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm. With the notification of the outcomes, we aim to provide this information to you by the end of November 2023, but this is also dependent on external factors which we do not always have control over. Following this, we aim to establish funding agreements for successful applicants four months after notification, so approximately by March 2024.

We acknowledge that this is a relatively challenging timeframe in which to complete this in-depth application. Unfortunately, we don't have much flexibility on that, so again, please start as early as possible to make sure you're able to submit your applications in time.

Notification of outcomes is subject to approval processes, and notification of outcome will be delayed for funding requests that are for more than $2 million. And the reason being that these requests have additional approval requirements. Rest assured as we will advise you on the outcome of your applications as soon as possible. Once projects are approved, the timing for the remaining stages are really dependent on the successful applicants. We aim to establish the funding agreement and let you get cracking on with your projects as soon as the successful projects have been notified. Again a reminder that all projects must be commissioned and operational by the 31 May 2025.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Questions’]

This brings us to the end of the presentation. I hope you have been putting your questions into the Q and A sections. Please feel free to add any more questions you may have. For any questions after this information session, you can contact Grants Enquiries. We have provided you here with the email which is the preference for contact. Make sure that you include the name of the grant in the subject line, Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund Hazardous Waste - Round 3. I will now hand over to Caroline De Santi, Team Leader Infrastructure Partnerships, who will be answering the questions. Thank you.

Caroline de Santi:

Hi everyone. We have just a couple more questions that I can see, one is around clinical waste, yes, they are eligible as part of the hazardous waste funded under this round. And the next question is also about including all optional attachments in the application. If there is any attachments that you see deem would be good for the assessment panel to have a look at, yes, I would include it. Any additional or further information about your project that you think the assessment panel would like to read so that it helps them with the assessment, yes, please include them. The application is quite detailed because it's hazardous waste compared to any other grants, but we would be happy to receive any feedback on the applications and we'll work in the future in maybe reducing some of the questions. You'll see that a lot of questions are also optional, not optional, but depending on yes or no so you might be asked other questions. I can't see any other question…. that hasn't been answered yet, so I'll leave a couple more minutes. I think I'll hand back to Sujata to close the session.

Sujata Doctor:

Thank you, Caroline. I hope this session has been helpful for you to understand and get more information about the funding round and assist you with your applications. As we have already said, please make sure that you start your applications a bit early and submit them in time, take support from our investment facilitation services and contact our Grants Enquiries if you have any questions at all. Once again, thank you so much for attending this session and learning more about the hazardous waste funding available through the state government. We thank you all, and look forward to working with you in the future.

<End of transcript>