With recent changes to what can be placed in the green lid bins, Council continues to encourage our community to sort their waste correctly to make the most of their three bins and to reduce contamination in the recycling and food and garden organics bins.
The announcement came in March that only food and garden waste can go in the green lid bins, eliminating items that were previously permitted such as paper, cardboard, wooden and bamboo utensils, dust, fur, hair and teabags.
Since then, Council has received feedback from the community claiming the changes make it impossible to fit their waste into the current bin system, which evidence suggests is not the case.
Manager Gregadoo Waste Management Centre Andrea Baldwin says if residents are sorting their waste correctly, they should not be relying so heavily on their red lid bins.
"A lot of the feedback we have received from the community is that the red lid bins for general waste are too small and the once a fortnight collection is insufficient," Ms Baldwin said.
"However, our data shows that the average red lid bin waste weighs 11.86 kilograms per fortnight, recycling weighs 8.42 kilograms per fortnight, and the green lid bin waste weighs 14.94 kilograms per week.
"Considering that each household is supplied with bins that hold 80 kilograms worth of volume, there is no evidence to support that a change in service is needed."
In addition to this information, contamination rates suggest there is more that residents can be doing to ensure their allocated waste collection is being used correctly.
"Our results show that generally each red lid bin has 22 per cent recycling and 45 per cent food and garden waste, highlighting that if items were placed in the correct bins there would be ample space available in your red lid bin," Andrea Baldwin said.
"This means there is a proportion of our community who are not sorting their waste correctly into the three bins, or not sorting it at all."
The changes to the green lid bin waste have been implemented by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) due to their findings that the items that have now been eliminated (i.e: paper, cardboard, teabags, treated timber etc.) may contain chemicals that, when collated into large quantities and incorporated into compost, can be harmful to humans and the environment.
"Wagga Wagga City Council understands the changes to the green lid bin waste are something that residents will take time to adapt to and is not expecting perfect waste sorting overnight," Andrea Baldwin said.
