General News
6 August, 2024
Abide by the rules to avoid landfill pile-up
The four-bin household waste recycling system introduced in Horsham last year has saved more than 3000 tonnes of waste from going to landfill - but not everyone is doing the right thing.
Horsham Rural City Council CEO Sunil Bhalla said that since the service was introduced in April last year, it had effectively diverted an average of 250 tonnes of organics per month and 10 tonnes of glass per month from ending up buried at the Dooen Landfill.
“That equates to about 300 truckloads or just under half the amount of waste being trucked to Dooen Landfill compared to before the kerbside collection changes,” he said.
“That is a terrific result for our community because it is not only better for the environment, it helps us avoid significant future cost increases that would have otherwise been imposed on council and ratepayers."
But some residents are failing to follow the recycling rules by gathering their recyclables in plastic bags.
Council wants residents to follow the rules in a bid to help prevent future fee increases and maintain efficient services for waste.
A spokesperson said the practice of bagging recyclables had created contamination, which complicated the process of sorting and reduced the efficiency of efforts to recycle.
"If recycling is placed in a bag, eventually someone has to empty the bag to determine whether what’s inside is actually recyclable," they said.
"Therefore, it’s best to put all items in the bin loose, not bagged or placed in boxes.
"When we put the wrong items in recycling, workers at the processing sites must spend time removing the contaminants from the recycling collection, which adds to the cost of the service.
"A worse outcome occurs when more than 10 per cent of the recycling load contains the wrong items."
This means the entire load must go to landfill instead of being reused - and puts upwards pressure on future rate rises.
"While HRCC does not profit from our waste services, we must pass on our operational expenses in order to keep our trucks running and our waste facilities - like the transfer stations and Dooen landfill - open," the spokesperson said.
Mr Bhalla said most people were separating their waste correctly.
"We’ve all had to adjust to fortnightly collections for our general waste and we understand that has been a challenge for some people in our community," he said.
“We thank all those who have done their best to adapt and understood that maintaining weekly collections would have cost residents more in annual fees, which is what our surveys showed the majority of people wanted to avoid."