Recycling (yellow-lidded bin)
Wasting valuable landfill space only increases costs to council and its ratepayers. The state government charges us all disposal costs for whatever we dump into landfill. These costs increase regularly in order to encourage communities to reduce waste generation and improve our reuse and recycling efforts.
Yellow-lidded bins can divert a large proportion of our waste-stream away from filling up our available landfill space. These can then become valued materials for recycling into new usable items we may want or need into the future. This can only happen when the bin only contains acceptable recyclables.
This cost and resource saving diversion doesn't happen when our yellow recycling bins are contaminated with other waste types – please put only accepted recycling into your yellow bin.
Non acceptable items should otherwise:
- go to hazardous disposal-recycling (eg. asbestos sheeting, chemicals, paints, batteries, TV, tyres, electronic, mobiles); or
- recycled another way (eg. Foodscraps, gardenwaste, organic matter to your green bin, wormfarms, chooks, compost); or
- buried into landfill (eg. window or drinking glass, pyrex, nappies, clothing, light bulbs).
More information
What can I do to help?
Best practice from around the world centres around “Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery”, simply put, waste less and recycle more!
- This can simply start with all of us looking at what we choose to buy (and support) – feel empowered, as our everyday purchasing decisions shape what will be made and sold into the future.
- Check if you really need to buy it – maybe it can be borrowed, hired or shared amongst friends, relatives or neighbours.
- Preference well-made durable items over disposable and short-lived low-quality items where possible.
- Preference no-to-low packaging, packaging with recycled content or that is clearly labelled as recyclable (numbers 1-7 in a triangle logo).
- Products made from nature-based materials (eg. wood/paper from trees) are healthier for you and for our shared environment in so many ways. These materials also biodegrade back into nature best. Plastics do not and are likely to outlive us all many times over while slowly degrading into potentially toxic by-products that are small or soluble enough to be ingested, entering our food-streams.
- Choosing to buy things that are made out of recycled materials helps support the whole recycling process by creating a market and using what we recycle to make new things.
- Similarly it is best to buy things that are made out of recyclable plastics, metals and glass – these should be clearly marked and marketed as recyclable. Buying these helps to reduce the production and disposal of non-recyclable materials that must be dumped into landfill to possibly cause health issues for future generations.
Recycling webcam
You can see where your Yellow bin recycling goes after pick up and how people are directly involved in the process in an animation. There is even a webcam that you can control. so you know how much effort goes into our comingled (mixed together) recycling bin waste stream.
More information
For more information on recycling household waste go to our domestic waste section. Specific detail on the following services is provided:
Many household items are clearly marked as accepted into your yellow recycling bin, if in doubt put in your red bin for landfill rather than contaminate recycling (risking consequences starting with hard to remove stickers on your bin and warning letters from council to having your recycling bin taken back).
For larger amounts of recycling or bigger recyclable items (be it comingled, hazardous or organic), please take these to the various transfer stations or the Waste Management Centre.
Let’s all help look after our region and our shared environment as together we can make a big difference.
