With over 700 historic Indigenous archaeological sites and 1,000,000 rock engravings (Petroglyphs), many dating back some 30,000 years, the Burrup Peninsula is the perfect place to discover the unique art, history and culture of the Aboriginal people of the Pilbara.

Deep rocky canyons lead to peaceful plunge pools in the beautiful Karijini National Park. Hundreds of islands with dazzling white beaches and untouched coral gardens are yours to explore on the Dampier Archipelago and Mackerel Islands. And yet the Pilbara is also known as the engine room of Australia - home to a massive mining industry in crude oil, salt, natural gas and iron ore. An incredible juxtaposition of two very different industries.

Explore the Pilbara's colonial past in Roebourne, the oldest settlement in the North West. Cossack is a ghost town and has many beautifully restored historical buildings which offer an insight to the hardships and successes of the first settlers. There is also a perfectly positioned lookout here overlooking Jarman Island’s lighthouse built in 1888, the long white sand and sparkling blue ocean that is Settlers Beach.

The Karratha City in partnership with its waste contractor Cleanaway, helps to inform the community about waste and recycling to simplify processes, improve resource recovery and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill to help protect our natural environment.

Yara Pilbara is a producer of a chemical used in the manufacturing of industrial explosives. The 300,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate produced each year on the peninsula directly underpins the blasting activities required to operate many of the Pilbara’s economy-shaping iron ore mines.

But straddling those two production regimes is a “waste” recycling initiative that is very much taking circular economics from paddock to plate in WA.

The product at the heart of this is known as Pivot 16. It’s being used a few hundred kilometres up the Pilbara coastline by Pardoo Beef Corporation to help grow pasture for cattle being raised for sale in both domestic and international markets.

Developing a Business Case Method
Dr Ian Dover is at the helm of this project, which begins with a comprehensive board-style workshop on October 23rd in Brisbane CBD. The workshop will review existing economic, social, environmental, and governance models for post-mining land-use options, incorporating fresh insights from expert stakeholders to craft a draft business case methodology for application across Queensland regional sites.

The initial workshop phase has secured funding from enviroMETS, and we are actively seeking full funding from other stakeholders. This phase will:
• Distil viable options from site and regional characterization.
• Identify the net value uplift (in dollars) of mineral resources, new commercial opportunities, social benefits, environmental advantages, and cultural enrichment options.
• Standardize a format to make the 'authorization process' comparable and efficient.
• Test a 'practitioner toolkit' with five pre-feasibility regional pilot site business cases.

This project will take the insights gained from LHP1 and LHP2 and develop them into investible business cases for new PMLU solutions. These solutions will support improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes for specific sites across Queensland, making it our third Lighthouse Project.

We are heartened by the overwhelming support from the community for our structured approach to establish several pilot/test site facilities in Queensland. These sites will allow stakeholders to discover and validate innovative new economic purposes.

Progress so far? Thanks to the enthusiastic participation of LHP1 and LHP2 attendees, we are gaining interest from government bodies, communities, mining companies, METS suppliers, and other industry sectors. Initiatives for scoping and funding have already begun.

Mapping the Regulatory Environment
Led by Prof Brett Heyward, this project is on a mission to gain a practical understanding of Queensland's regulatory framework and industry practices, and how they impact the economic transformation of mining-affected land and communities. This fully funded initiative will:
• Identify and map regulatory pathways and industry practices posing challenges to repurposing scenarios.
• Uncover opportunities for establishing pilot/trial sites.
• Gather insights from international experiences with innovative post-mining land use.
• Provide recommendations for solutions to address these challenges.
• Extend industry and regulator support to establish an enabling environment for innovative post-mining land use.
Where are we now? We've completed numerous stakeholder meetings, including a workshop with industry and regulatory participants that revealed a multitude of factors influencing the feasibility of post-mining land use opportunities. Our research team has also kicked off several case studies covering various mining types and PMLU options, all aimed at further enriching our project findings.

Pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) constitutes most energy storage worldwide. When electrical energy is plentiful and cheap, it is used to pump water from a lower reservoir to a nearby upper reservoir through a pipe or tunnel. During periods of peak demand, when electricity is expensive, the pumped water is released downhill through a turbine to generate electricity (see Figure 1). About 80% of the electricity used to pump the water uphill is recovered, and 20% is lost.

Australia already has river-based pumped hydro energy storage facilities at Wivenhoe, Shoalhaven and Tumut 3. Construction of Snowy 2.0 has commenced—this project would add 2,000 MW of generation to the National Electricity Market (NEM) and provide about 175 hours of storage. The Kidston pumped hydro scheme in an old gold mine in Far North Queensland has received Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) funds. A further six pumped hydro energy projects have been shortlisted in the Underwriting New Generation Investments program.

The University for the real world

QUT (Queensland University of Technology) is a highly successful Australian university with an applied emphasis in courses and research. Based in Brisbane, the university has a global outlook, some 50,000 students, including 9000 from overseas, and an annual budget of more than AU$750 million.

Solutions that enable the cost-effective recovery of secondary minerals from mining waste can unlock valuable critical and strategic mineral resources and may offset the costs of mine rehabilitation activities.

Recognising the potential value of these assets, Geoscience Australia recently launched an online Atlas of Mine Waste to provide information about mine tailings, waste rock, and other mining waste stockpiles in Australia.56

Cost-effective solutions that support secondary mineral extraction from waste streams such as tailings, wastewater, and waste rock stockpiles present an opportunity to improve closure outcomes. Consultations have noted that economic recovery opportunities are present in legacy sites where less efficient extractive processes have left high concentrations of target minerals in waste.

Seeing waste as a resource and changing our LIFESTYLE is two important habits we can all do to help launch the Circular Economy in FNQ.

THIS CHANGE IS ACTUALLY BETTER FOR US AND BETTER FOR THE PLANET. It's full of opportunities including new industries that will develop effective ways of reusing our waste and the beauty of that is, it actually saves existing business models MONEY. Saving it and making it.

Our part in the piece of the puzzle is to connect the dots of passionate sustainable ambassadors in science, business and society to help us bring everyone along in a change that is good for the planet and good for the people.

If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions globally behind the USA & China. In Australia, we waste roughly 7.3 million tonnes of food costing over $20 billion per year. With 25% of all water used in agriculture going into food production, that’s one quarter of our usable water resource discarded. Another resource we cannot afford to abuse.

Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects.

Glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, tyres, electronics, batteries, construction materials, food and garden waste are all waste items containing value in the form of energy and resources.

The Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan guides how industry, government and the community work together to improve the quality of water flowing to the Great Barrier Reef. Although the current plan was originally to 2022, it does not expire and continues to remain in place until it is replaced by a new plan.

The plan builds on 15 years of efforts by governments at all levels working in partnership with landholders, natural resource managers, industry, research and conservation groups through successive Reef Water Quality Protection Plans.

It addresses all land-based sources of water pollution including run-off from urban, industrial and public lands; while recognising the majority of pollution comes from agricultural activities. It includes social, cultural and economic values for the first time.

Across the city there are many actors and projects working to reorient power, materials, resources and knowledges in service to the regeneration of our city. Yet we still have a long way to go to shift extractive and accumulated capital and transition our policy and politics towards a more equitable and long term view. Our ways of collaborating, distributing resources and harnessing the collective intelligences of our place are not set up well to accelerate these pockets of potential.

Regen Melbourne’s wildly ambitious goals are our contribution to this transition. They seek to radically increase our ambition and to deepen our collective systemic impact.

Mine rehabilitation is the return of disturbed land to a safe, stable, non-polluting condition that supports a post-mining land use (PMLU). In Queensland, grazing and native ecosystems are the most commonly proposed PMLUs for rehabilitated land. However, there are a range of other PMLUs, as well as post-rehabilitation opportunities for future landholders, that could be explored to maximise social, economic and environmental outcomes from rehabilitation in Queensland.

Repurposing mineral waste may reduce the burden of waste management and generate cost-effective products. Converted waste products can support mine rehabilitation processes. For example, a common practice of waste repurposing is the co-disposal of tailings and waste rock to create physically stable mixtures to backfill mining voids.

Converted waste products can also support other industries, such as agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. Technical solutions can convert mineral waste into neutral and stable products depending on mineralogy.

Ideally, solutions will align with circular economy principles and generate waste-derived products to meet local demand such as the production of construction materials for local infrastructure.

CORE works with members and stakeholders on innovative solutions to challenging soil related issues. From enhancing agricultural soils to treating complex soil contamination issues, CORE develops solutions using methods and technologies involving bio-products tailor-made for the situation.

Resilient Futures works with organisations to apply the thinking and tools required to leverage disruption.

The Resilient Futures definition of disruption is: the consequences, intended and unintended, of rapid (often exponential) change bought about by digital and physical technologies as well as non-technological change such as social unrest, economic uncertainty, political instability ecological transformation.

Our approach is based on twenty five years of experience in working with organisations around the world. In today’s operating environment, no organisation or industry is or will be untouched by disruption and all organisational leaders must make a choice – see disruption as a tailwind and act to leverage it, or view it as a headwind and fall foul of its consequences.

Resilient Futures can be engaged in a number of ways including training in strategy development, facilitation of strategy development, management coaching and speaking and presentations – all with the objective of applying Strategy in Action to ensure that organisations:

- Be disruption aware and ready
- Embed active strategic capability
- Change ahead of change
- Generate authentic and sustainable value

Strategy in Action (SiA) is the Resilient Futures’ strategy framework used by organisations that are committed to re-setting how they think about and execute strategy – with a specific focus on leveraging disruption.

SiA is specially designed for planning in an age of exponential change where the speed, scale and scope of change is unprecedented and strategy formulation and execution need to be one and the same to ensure agile and timely responses to fast-changing environments. SiA is easy to learn and apply and can be used at a variety of levels within an organisation.