Media Response |

- City of Ballarat Director Development and Planning Angelique Lush  

Q. Do you have figures on how much of Ballarat's green waste is contaminated?  Less than one per cent of Ballarat’s green waste is contaminated, however the impact of this is significant. It requires removing the individual contaminated products, which can include plastic from flower pots and labels, before the green waste can be used in landscaping and farming.

We urge the community to be vigilant when placing waste in their green-lidded bin, if we can avoid placing contaminated waste in the green bin from the beginning it helps to avoid the timely processing of removing it later on.

Q. How much of Ballarat's recycling is contaminated? 

Approximately 15 per cent of materials placed in the city’s yellow-lidded recycling bins simply do not belong.

Non-recyclable items, such as plastic bags, nappies and grass, are often placed in these bins, which then contaminates the recycling process.

Packaged food, bagged recycling and general waste, soft plastics and electronic waste is also prevalent.  Sometimes, even just a few contaminated bins can prevent an entire truckload of recyclables from being reused.

That’s not good for our ratepayers and certainly not doing the best for the environment.

Q. How much is it costing council to pay for removal of contaminated material from recycling?  The cost varies from $150,000 to $210,000 per year.

Q. How much is it costing council to pay for removal of contaminated material from green waste? 

It is currently built into the gate fee for green waste processing, however it is estimated to cost approximately $50,000.

Q. What is council doing to prevent this?  In line with our Council Plan and resource recovery and waste management strategy, the City of Ballarat is committed to diverting material from landfill and focuses instead on reusing, recycling and recovering.  We feel the community is also becoming more aware that landfills are not a long-term solution for waste management.

That’s why we’re looking at new options for landfill – burying waste is not a solution.

We will be ramping up these efforts to ensure maximum diversion from landfill, including the introduction of an all-waste interchange and waste to energy facility.

An all-waste interchange gives the City of Ballarat the ability to sort through materials and reduce contamination, in turn giving us a better product to recycle.  Meanwhile, a waste to energy facility allows us to create the potential to fuel local industry by sending household waste to a waste to energy facility rather than burying it.

But educating the community on what can and cannot go into each of our bins is still one of our top priorities.  

The reality is contamination is an issue for councils everywhere, not just the City of Ballarat.

Minimising contamination from the start of the process can save us in the long-term.

That’s something for which we all need to take responsibility.

In 2017 we piloted a series of community campaigns, including writing to residents who may not be aware they are putting the wrong item into their yellow and green-lidded bins.

The purpose of this campaign was to provide residents who aren’t deliberately getting it wrong an opportunity to correct what they put in the bin.

We have also carried out a series of audits to understand what people are putting in their bins so we can ensure we’re getting the right message out about recycling and green waste.

In 2019 innovative, targeted campaigning will be undertaken particularly off the back of the audits to ensure we know who we need to educate. We want to be Australia’s leading waste management city.

Each year we also produce an A-Z waste guide to educate the community about what items can go into each bin, you can find this online now.   This is accompanied by further messaging across our social media channels and coordinated media coverage.

Keep any eye out for more in this space – councillors and officers will be available to meet with community groups to discuss these issues further in the new year.