Have your say on region’s waste

HOW the community sorts its garbage is set to change.

The City of Ballarat is seeking feedback on a range of waste and recycling options for the municipality after the State Government mandated a Victoria-wide standardised system in 2022.

Despite the introduction of strict regulations, including the addition of a purple lidded fourth bin for glass, local governments have flexibility over how often these bins are collected and their size.

The new rules will also allow both food and organic waste to be placed in green bins.

“The State Government changes to how we sort our waste are an exciting opportunity for our municipality to design our future kerbside collections to ensure more household waste and recycling is being recovered and transformed into something new,” mayor Cr Des Hudson said.

“The community will be able to help us decide on a waste service that meets our community’s needs, while balancing the costs and benefits.

“The environmental and financial costs will continue to grow unless we change how we recycle and reduce waste.”

A statement from the City of Ballarat said waste disposal costs ratepayers $28,000 per day and last financial year 24,000 tonnes of rubbish as sent to the Smythesdale landfill site.

Responses the City’s current waste community consultation will go into an upcoming kerbside transition plan that’ll be presented to council for consideration at a future meeting.

The move comes after glass was removed from City of Ballart kerbside recycling in 2019 when provider Australian Paper Recovery was unable to process it.

At the same time a ban by the Chinese Government on the import of anything but highly non-contaminated recyclable material threw Australia’s recycling systems into chaos and resulted in large volumes of waste ending up in landfill.