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We have a Gold Star Recycling education program that rewards residents for recycling right.
Whitehorse residents are keen recyclers. Most residents want to do the right thing and recycle right. To help, our Gold Star Recycling team regularly do visual checks of household recycling and food and garden organic bins and provide feedback tags. These tags provide pointers and information on how to be a top recycler.
How are we going?
During 2020-2021 a total of 5,473 recycling bins were visually checked. This is what was found:
- 50% of bins checked were gold star recyclers, meaning there were no incorrect items in the recycling bin. Well done!
- 50% of bins checked had one or more items incorrectly placed in the recycling bin.
With room to improve, we know our community can do it.
The top incorrect items found in the recycling bin were:
- Soft Plastics - such as chip packets, lolly wrappers, plastic bags, rice bags etc.
These items act like paper in the recycling facility and cause problems in the recycling process. Place these in the garbage bin or recycle through RedCycle - Bagged Recycling - set your recycling free to ensure they are recycled right
- Polystyrene/Foam - it breaks into small pieces and can pollute the environment and reduce the ability to recover other materials.
Visit our disposal options page for information on how to correctly dispose.
Why Recycling Right is Important
Items placed in the recycling bin are taken to the VISY recycling facility where they are sorted and processed before being turned into new products. Find out what happens to your recycling here.
Recycling is important as it minimises waste sent to landfill, reduces the demand for new materials and reduces water and energy needed to make new products.
Putting the wrong thing in your recycling bin causes big problems in the recycling process. Which can include:
- Damaging the collection vehicles
- Health hazards for people sorting recycling at the recycling sorting facility
- Contaminating the whole truck load
- Forcing materials to be landfilled
- Increased service costs.
Food and Garden Organics
With the upgrade to our organics collection service, food is now accepted. From August we will be visually checking food and garden organics bins to support our community to help get it right.
Your food and garden organics are recycled into compost and mulch which is used on garden and farms across Victoria, so it’s important to put the right things in your bin. Incorrect items can end up in the compost, cause problems at the composting facility, damage machinery, injure workers and livestock, and even result in a full truck load being rejected by the processing facility and sent to landfill.
You can watch a short video on what happens to your organic waste here.
