Glass out of city’s kerbside recycling

GLASS bottles and jars will no longer allowed in Ballarat’s yellow kerbside recycling bins from 30 September following a decision by council to engage a new recyclables provider.

New recycling service, Australian Paper Recovery, is unable to process glass in its facilities.

City of Ballarat Mayor Cr Samantha McIntosh said she knows the move will “concern” some residents and rate payers.

“And it concerns us too,” she said. “But we have looked at all the possibilities, and at this stage this option is the best and most cost effective.”

The move to Australian Paper Recovery comes after previous recycling provider SKM, the state’s largest, went into liquidation leaving stockpiles of recyclable material at various locations across the state.

One of the main reasons for SKM’s decline relates to governments in countries where the recycling was processed, mainly China, banning the import of anything but highly non-contaminated material.

The subsequent flow on effect has seen a crisis in the nations recycling systems with significant volumes of waste ending up in landfill.

With 80 per cent of the city’s recyclables paper, cardboard, aluminium and plastic, the move is keeping as much as possible from ending up in the tip.

“As a community, and as individuals, we have to take a new approach to recycling,” Cr McIntosh said. “We need to change our recycling habits to make the system work better.”

While placing glass in the kerbside yellow topped recycling bins will no longer be an option, council is seeking to establish nine drop off locations for recyclable glass across the city. The plan is to locate them in places like retail precincts, to make it as easy as possible to recycle glass.

Glass contains can also be placed in domestic general rubbish bins.

At a minimum the new system will run for 12 months, the length of the initial contract with Australian Paper Recovery.

The new recycling system will not add to the current municipal waste level, but council would not disclose the overall cost of the new contract.

“Our approach… means council will now be able to ensure our recycling is processed locally and genuinely reused, at no addition cost,” Cr McIntosh said.

Removing of glass from yellow recycling bins is not the only change coming to Ballarat recycling system.

Some plastics will no longer be accepted in domestic recycling, with the municipality saying ‘bottles and containers from your kitchen, laundry and bathroom,’ are acceptable without disclosing the PET numbers of those plastics and also excluding meat trays.

Council will begin directly communication the changes to the recycling systems soon, with a mail out to all residents and placing ‘no glass’ stickers on all 45,500 yellow recycling bins in the municipality.