Recycling booms at Council’s waste facilities
Finding a new use … Fraser Coast Regional Council Team Leader Waste Operations Scott Hopkins and Councillor David Lee check out some of the thousands of items on offer at the Recycle and Reuse Market at the Nikenbah Transfer Station.
More than 100,000 tonnes of material were diverted from Fraser Coast landfill for recycling and reuse during the last financial year.
The figures were released as part of National Recycling Week this week (November 8 to 15).
Councillor David Lee said 180,000 tonnes of material passed over the weigh bridges at the Saltwater Creek Road Landfill site in Maryborough and the Nikenbah Transfer facility during the 2020/21 financial year.
“Of the 180,000 tonnes that came on to the site, only 72,000 tonnes went into landfill,” Cr Lee said.
“The rest was reused, repurposed or recycled.”
Some items recycled through Council’s waste facilities in the 2020-21 financial year include:
- 35,000 tonne of green waste (converted to mulch)
- 30,000 tonne of clean fill
- 4,700 tonne of mixed paper
- 4,000 tonne of concrete
- 4,000 tonne of cardboard
- 3,000 tonne of timber
- 1,400 tonne of coloured glass (wine bottles)
- 780 tonne of mixed plastic (milk and drink bottles)
- 192 tonne of steel cans
- 50 tonne of tyres
- 44 tonne of plastic film (clear plastic)
- 41 tonne of aluminium cans
- 10 tonne of polystyrene
- 11 tonne of plaster board, and
- More than 3500 mattresses.
“Council collected and recycled 11,000 tonnes of material from the fortnightly kerbside bin collection,” Cr Lee said.
“Our plan to build a new Material Recovery Facility will improve the amount of material we recover from the kerbside collection and again lower the amount of material going to landfill.”
As part of its recycling efforts, Council also provided refuse and recycle education through school visits, site visits and group tours of the materials recovery and recycling facilities.
“The education program helps inform participants of how to ‘bin it right’ to minimise the amount of contamination in the yellow-lid recycling bins,” Cr Lee said.
He thanked residents who had dropped off their unused and unwanted items at the waste facilities.
“We sold 1,320 tonnes of items through our Nikenbah and Maryborough tip shops,” Cr Lee said.
“If items are not in re-sellable condition, we salvage whatever we can at our recycling shed before disposing the rest to landfill,” he said.
Cr Lee encouraged residents to continue sorting their rubbish into reusable, recyclables, green waste and rubbish before heading to a waste facility to ensure they don’t go to landfill.