When people start to engage in some type of recycling they are surprised at the amount of packaging and food scraps in their waste.

Packaging

Choosing minimally processed and packaged food has a significant effect on reducing the amount of waste produced by your home. Preparing smaller meals using less processed food is healthier and results in less waste. Buying bulk food, avoiding small individual packaged food or over packaged food, buying concentrates and refills are all ways of reducing your amount of packaging. Buying bottled water is expensive and unnecessary. Good cheap water filters are available and the resulting product is the same. Buying bulk cordials to use with that water is a way of providing cheap drinks for your family.

Composting & Worm Farms

Food scraps are a valuable resource that is usually discarded by most people. Food scraps can make up 36% volume of household bins. Worm farms, compost bins and keeping poultry where permitted are excellent ways of utilising food scraps. Fertiliser and compost made from food scraps can replace expensive artificial fertiliser made with large amounts of energy. Compost and mulch produced from garden waste can help to reduce the amount of water used in the garden and create a soil environment that makes plants healthy and increases their resistance to insects and disease. Keeping poultry to use food scraps can provide you with fresh chemical free eggs and poultry manure makes an excellent nitrogen source to kick start your compost. Please contact Council for advice on local bylaws relating to poultry.

Unwanted Goods

Many unwanted useful items are discarded as waste, when with a little thought and effort they could be reused. Clothing and bedding are always being sought by charitable organisations such as the Red Cross, Good Samaritans and Vincent De Paul. Organise a garage sale with friends and neighbors, or just put a notice on your local supermarket notice board.

Recycling

Please refer to the section on this site - What can I Recycle?

Many people tend to think that once they place rubbish in a bin that it is no longer their responsibility, once the lid is closed the rubbish is out of mind. To process and transport large amounts of waste requires large amounts of energy, this creates large amounts of greenhouse gas. Everyone has to contribute to this cost in the end. Packaging and food scraps when land filled produce Methane gas, which is 21 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Present landfill sites are filling up and new sites are extremely difficult to find, expensive to purchase and extremely expensive to develop.

The message is very simple, avoid waste, reduce waste, reuse waste and recycle waste (when viable). All members of our community pay for waste disposal, either financially or environmentally. The more we produce the more we pay.

Please contact Council's Waste Management Officer on 9771 7743 for further advice.