Sandy Ridge

Sandy Ridge is located 240kms northwest of Kalgoorlie in WA and is Australia’s first commercial geological repository. It is fully open to accept up to 100,000 tonnes per annum, and this capacity can be scaled up quickly. Sandy Ridge is purely a domestic solution built by an Australian company for Australian businesses and communities and only accepts waste from Australia and its Exclusive Economic Zone.

We combine natural barriers from the outback’s unique geology and structural protections to create a multi-barrier system that gives best-in-class containment and disposal for hazardous (chemical waste) and low-level radioactive waste (LLW).

We believe our multi-barrier system provides a superior hazardous waste solution versus available alternatives

Sandy Ridge provides a valuable solution for the management of some of Australia’s most complex and intractable wastes that are not suitable for current resource recovery, treatment or waste disposal pathways. These wastes contain contaminants or properties that present an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment and require a higher level of protection than provided by conventional disposal pathways. Typical examples include toxic wastes (eg pesticides, cyanide), persistent organic pollutants (eg polyfluoroalkyl substances) and heavy metals (eg mercury and arsenic). The Sandy Ridge facility is also licenced to accept low level radioactive waste (LLW) including Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) often found in minerals sands, rare earth and oil and gas processing facilities and disused sealed radioactive sources (DSRS) used in the construction, industrial processing and medical industries.

Due to our world-class safety case and the fact we have pre-funded our post-closure liabilities, once Tellus® takes risk and title to a client’s waste we are uniquely able to provide the waste generator with positive assurance to remove any associated disposal liabilities from its balance sheet under AASB137. We do this by issuing the Tellus PIC™. This certificate is backed by Big 4 accounting advice and provides assurance that there is no tail liability risk for our clients. This is tangible value.

We are committed to contributing towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), which aim to create a better, fairer and more sustainable world by 2030.

We enable green solutions by addressing their associated hazardous waste streams, such as lithium batteries, energy from waste plants and solar power cell production to name a few. And we run our facilities on green energy sources – we are the first Australian mining operation to go 100% solar during daylight hours. This results in a smaller footprint on the environment. As such Tellus® is a “Green Enabler” and highlights the fact that you can be in hazardous waste management and still be green.

Tellus® not only seeks to safely clean up Australia of hazardous waste, but also to reinvest in our communities through the circular economy. For example, we are partnering with international experts to test ways to reuse and recover waste streams at Sandy Ridge, and we have plans to roll out our first circular economy technology in FY22.

Additionally, although there isn’t technology (yet) to recycle or reuse all wastes, we make the best of a bad situation by enabling future recovery. Unlike temporary storage solutions that do not have the long term protections, or landfills where waste is mixed with other wastes making it difficult to recover, Sandy Ridge provides the opportunity to store strategic wastes safely and separately.