Ballarat residents are being encouraged to do their part to divert waste from landfill and to learn more about where waste and recycled material from the City of Ballarat goes.
Managing waste is one of the biggest issues facing society today. The City of Ballarat is proactively working to sustainably address the issue of waste through strategies such as the Pass on Glass system and the development of a Materials Recovery Facility and a Circular Economy Precinct. The City of Ballarat also has a Carbon Neutrality and 100% Renewables Action Plan (2019-2025) and is actively working with businesses to promote a circular economy.
However, the current rate of waste produced in Ballarat is both expensive and unsustainable. Every week around 48,000 bins are collected from Ballarat homes -about 2,500 truck loads or around 25,000 tonnes of waste each year.
This increases to around 50,000 tonnes when commercial waste is included. The construction of a new cell for waste at the Ballarat Regional Landfill is costing $2.9 million and on current trends it will be full in two years.
City of Ballarat Executive Manager Waste and Environment Les Stokes said reducing the amount of waste going to landfill begins at home and would require community-wide behaviour change.
"High levels of consumerism, combined with excess packaging and poor waste disposal habits, are contributing to the problem," he said.
"Better recycling habits at home could mean 10,000 less tonnes go to landfill - that's around 1,000 truck loads."
Most waste is collected by vehicles specifically designated to only collect a particular type of waste, such as general household waste (rubbish) or recycling, including cardboard, paper and plastic, and green waste. Relevant bins must be placed correctly by 6am on collection days.
However, another truck provides multiple runs a day and is used to pick-up missed bins from the previous day. Designed to service narrow lanes, this truck completes multiple collection runs each day, collecting each waste stream separately and disposing of them correctly.
After collection, the contents of red lid bins are tipped directly into the Smythesdale landfill. Red lid bins should only hold household waste that cannot be recycled through the yellow or green lid bins or through the Pass on Glass system.
Alternatively, the yellow lid bins should hold only products that can be recycled. This may include plastic bottles and containers from your kitchen, bathroom and laundry, clean paper and cardboard and aluminium and steel cans.
Glass cannot be recycled in the yellow lid bins - it must be delivered to a glass bin drop-off site where it is recycled into new glass bottles.
Once collected, recycled material is delivered to a receival site in Ballarat before it is transported to Melbourne for sorting prior to being processed into reusable material.
Green waste, which is collected fortnightly, is transported to a composting company near Ballarat where contaminants are manually removed.
A large industrial shredder then reduces and crushes the material before it's processed through an aerated composting system. The finished compost is then audited for quality and sold to agricultural and residential markets. Around 10,000 tonnes of green waste from Ballarat households undergoes this process each year.
