Mixed Recycling Returns to Fortnightly Service

Published on 30 September 2022

Mixed Recycling to Return to Fortnightly Service

Yarriambiack Shire Council has reinforced its commitment to a sustainable kerbside recycling service by reinstating the fortnightly mixed recycling (yellow bin) service across the municipality, effective immediately. The recently established glass recycling (purple bin) service will also change to a bimonthly service.

The updated schedule is a direct result of a comprehensive community survey that saw an overwhelming proportion of the community support a return to the fortnightly kerbside mixed recycling service.  Council recognised that the community felt that the more frequent service was more in line with the needs of a modern resource recovery system which aims to ensure that as many materials as possible are recovered and reprocessed into other products.

Yarriambiack Shire Council Chief Executive Officer Tammy Smith said, “Thank you to everyone who completed the recycling survey that helped inform the amended schedule. The introduction of the kerbside glass recycling service has been a huge learning opportunity for us. As one of the first Councils in regional Victoria to implement the glass recycling bins, we discovered that while residents supported the concept of glass recycling, the usage of glass at a household level is not consistent, making the need for a four-weekly service less sustainable. The work behind the scenes to implement, review and update the recycling service across the Shire has been significant, but our main goal is to ensure the service meets the needs of our residents”.

The decision was made by Council at its September meeting to reintroduce the glass recycling service as a bimonthly service with the next kerbside collection that will occur across the entire municipality on the same day, on Friday 25 November. The mixed recycling service will recommence on a fortnightly basis with based on the following schedule:

Council’s Waste Management Contractor has recently confirmed that their recycling processor has changed the range the of plastics that will be accepted for recycling. This update will see a small range of plastics that can be recycled in the mixed (yellow) recycling bin.

Key recycling messages for the Yarriambiack community include:

• Plastics that can now be recycled are Numbers 1,2 and 5.  These are all hard plastics that can easily be recycled and will have the number printed on the plastic. Typical hard plastics that can be recycled are plastic milk bottles, yoghurt and butter containers, clear or white plastic meat trays, shampoo and liquid soap bottles and detergent and laundry liquid bottles
• Soft plastics cannot be placed in your recycling bin. Example of soft plastic include glad wrap, ice-cream wrappers and pasta packets.
• Lids should be removed and place in the mixed recycling bin separately
• Rinse out food containers – they don’t need to be perfect but most of the food needs to be rinsed off.
• Clean cardboard, paper, tin and aluminium cans.
• Don’t your recycling – keep them loose in your bin.
• Other household items such as textiles, toys, electrical items and organic material cannot be placed in the recycling bin.

“Getting recycling right is vital and vital for every household to consider. By reducing the contamination (the wrong things going into the recycling bin), we can save on the costs of recycling. Contaminated loads of recycling cost more to process and can end up in landfill. Council will continue to work with the community and our waste contractor to provide the best recycling service possible to all residents for both kerbside services and continuous improvement in the transfer station operations”, Ms Smith said.

Updated recycling calendars will be delivered to every household in the coming weeks. More information regarding Council’s kerbside recycling service and recycling tips can be found at https://www.yarriambiack.vic.gov.au/Council-Services/Waste/Waste-Collection-Services.