Reducing Waste
Many Councils across Australia have been extremely successful at introducing kerbside recycling systems to help households reduce the waste that goes into their garbage bins. But recycling services do differ between Council areas in our region. Usually this boils down to the costs and the availability of contractors to provide recycling services. Speak to you local Council waste department to find out what materials are recycled in your part of the region. Most produce an annual recycling guide which is provided to residents.
In general there is also still a lot of organic material (mostly from kitchen food scraps) going into home waste bins. This takes up valuable landfill space and generates methane once these materials become deeply compacted in landfill. It also means valuable organic material is lost from being reworked into relatively poor quality Australian soils.
Information about waste reduction
Be sure to borrow our DIY Home Sustainability Guide and library kit from your local library. It includes lots of practical tips about reducing waste in your home. These kits are available from libraries across our project region.
The NSW Government has produced the Recycling Trouble Shooter to answer some of the more common recycling questions and dilemmas (note: this is a PDF download).
Recycling Near You is an online tool that can help you check what recycling services are available through your Council or commercial recycling contractors across Australia.
SERRROC (the South East Resource Recovery Regional Organisation of Councils) is working with all the Councils in our project region to help improve and develop recycling services. This includes providing shared services like an annual hazardous waste collection services, as well helping to run projects such as Love Food Hate Waste in our region.
Follow this simple Compost Guide to start turning organic materials from your garden into food for your plants.
Follow this simple Wormfarming Guide to to start turning your kitchen food scraps into food for your plants.
Instead of buying something new, why not buy something second hand? Or try the Freecycle online network to freely swop items that are no longer needed. There are a number of Freecycle networks in our project region.
