Recycling ramps up at Council’s waste facilities

More than 105,000 tonnes of material like cardboard, concrete, metals and timber were recycled on the Fraser Coast during the last financial year.

Fraser Coast Regional Council released the figures today for the start of National Recycling Week (13 – 18 November).

Cr David Lee said 180,000 tonnes of material passed over the weighbridges at the Maryborough and Hervey Bay waste facilities during the 2022/23 financial year.

“It’s pleasing that only about 75,000 tonnes of the material taken to the two major waste facilities ended up in landfill, with more than 105,000 tonnes reused, repurposed or recycled,” he said.

“That’s material like concrete, e-waste, timber, tyres, polystyrene and green waste.

“On top of that, we collected more than 7000 tonnes through the fortnightly yellow lid recycling bin kerbside collection.

“That’s a great result and we want to thank local residents for embracing recycling as it is good for the environment, good for the economy and good for our community.”

Cr Zane O’Keefe said Council encouraged everyone to recycle right to minimise the amount of contamination in the yellow-lid recycling bins.

“It is fantastic to see that the contamination rate in our yellow-lid recycling bins has dropped from 43 per cent in 2018 to about 18 per cent now,” he said.

“The top three recycling rules to remember are – never bag it, take the lids off jars and bottles, and rinse your containers.”

Cr O’Keefe said the top three contaminants in recycling bins were nappies, batteries and soft plastics such as plastic shopping bags, bread bags, bubble wrap, and fruit and vegetable bags.

“All the items in your recycle bins are hand sorted before being sorted by machinery so please think about the workers and choose the correct bin for your nappies,” he said.

“Soft plastics also currently need to go into your general rubbish bins, while batteries should not go into either bin as they are a fire hazard.

“A staggering 90 per cent of used handheld batteries are going to landfill or being disposed of incorrectly. Residents can dispose of batteries safely at any Fraser Coast waste facility for free, and this includes laptop, power tool and car batteries.

“Woolworths, Aldi, Officeworks and Bunnings all accept household batteries for recycling through B-cycle with battery disposal points listed at https://bcycle.com.au/drop-off/”

Cr Lee said work began in August on constructing a new Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at the Maryborough landfill to replace the current facility at Dundowran, which had reached the end of its working life.

“With the new MRF, we will be able to extract more of what comes through the yellow recycle bins for recycling which means less waste will be going into landfill,” he said.

“The new facility will have more automation to extract recyclables, producing a better quality product that will unlock markets for the recyclables you place in your yellow-lid recycling bin.

“It will open the potential to introduce closed-loop systems to make products like park benches or planking from recycled plastic, or products from recycled cardboard such as cat litter.”

Construction of the new MRF is due to be completed by the end of 2024.

Items recycled through Council’s Materials Recovery Facility in 2022/23 include:

• 6289 tonnes of mixed paper and cardboard;
• 1274 tonnes of packaging glass;
• 1093 tonnes of packaging plastic;
• 315 tonnes of steel cans; and
• 172 tonnes of aluminium cans.

From 1 November, glass, wine and spirit bottles from 150ml to three litres now attract a 10 cent refund at all container refund points across Queensland.