A recycling company based just outside Wodonga has been ordered to pay $5,000 to the court fund for storing thousands of cubic metres of waste without the required permission from EPA Victoria.

The company’s director was also ordered to pay $2,500, but both avoided a conviction after pleading guilty to the charges.

Immix Integrated Metal Management Pty Ltd and its director James Anthony Suggate were charged over stockpiles kept at the company’s site on Whytes Road, Bandiana, which exceeded the total volume it was permitted to hold at the site.

Immix accepts scrap metal waste from other sites for sorting and recycling_, and an EPA registration or permit based on the amount of material being stored would have included strict environmental conditions for the operation.

EPA officers inspected the site on 10 May 2022 and carried out volumetric surveys that revealed the site held around 9,200 cubic metres of waste.

The charges heard in the Wodonga Magistrate’s Court covered the company’s failure to obtain the correct permit, and its failure to report the volume of material onsite to EPA Victoria in accordance with its registration.

The volume of waste metal at Immix’s Bandiana site during the May 2022 inspection required it to hold the higher-level permission, being a permit, and almost the highest permission, being an operating licence.

The court also ordered the company to advertise the details of the offence and the penalty in the Border Mail.

Members of the public can report pollution by calling EPA’s 24-hour hotline on 1300 372 842 or providing details online at www.epa.vic.gov.au/report-pollution/reporting-pollution