Community asked to rate new four-bin service

THE Surf Coast Shire council is calling for community feedback on their innovative four-bin kerbside service.

Introducing the service in January 2021, the Surf Coast Shire was among the first local governments in the state to implement the service, prompting a reduction of waste ending up in landfill.

The council has confirmed early figures show the initiative has decreased waste to landfill by 33 per cent compared to this time last year, as well as recovering 220 tonnes of glass for local processing.

The service includes a green-lidded food and garden organics bin collected weekly in urban areas and fortnightly in rural areas, yellow-lidded recycling bin collected fortnightly, a purple-lidded glass only bin collected monthly and a red-lidded bin for general household waste collected fortnightly.

A previous Surf Coast audit showed that 40 per cent of what used to end up in red-lidded bins was food waste and a further 16 per cent was recyclable material.

Surf Coast Shire mayor Libby Stapleton said she was pleased that council was pioneering waste management in the region while working with the community to improve services.

“We know that Victorian households throw away about 400,000 tonnes of food waste in landfill every year and more than half of that waste is avoidable,” Cr Stapleton said.

“So far, we’ve had very positive feedback on our four-bin system and doing this survey will help us further understand what’s working well and how council can offer more support if needed.”

The results of the survey will be used to inform community education programs as well determine the community’s needs with regard to additional pick-ups during busy periods including Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

“So far, we have done an amazing job as a community to reduce our carbon footprint – already saving a whopping 589 tonnes of waste from going into landfill,” Cr Stapleton said.

“This new system has helped us as a community to reduce greenhouse emissions – saving waste from landfill and turning valuable resources such as food scraps into compost.”

Residents have until June, 7 to have their say on the four-bin kerbside collection system.