Time to sort it out

THE City of Greater Geelong has thrown down the gauntlet to residents wanting to throw out their rubbish with a clear conscience.

With a fresh recycling crisis in full swing, CoGG yesterday revealed the effort it would make to limit the amount of reusable waste going to landfill.

The question now is: how much effort are Geelong residents willing to go to, to be good recyclers?

Recycling is easy if all you have to do is rinse out any of your waste that is remotely reusable, chuck it into your yellow-lidded bin and wheel it on to the nature strip once a fortnight. Most people can do that. But with SKM Recycling out of action, CoGG wants residents to get their hands dirty, and sort out their own rubbish, just like many do in parts of Europe and Japan.

Recycling hubs will be established at accessible locations around the suburbs of Geelong, and it will be up to residents to load their waste into their vehicles and hand-deliver it into specific skips.

There’ll be vessels to dump unwanted paper and cardboard, and separate spots where glass, plastic and metal products can be sent for recycling.

CoGG will aim to onsell the sorted items.

It’s not an ideal solution, but it is a good initiative by the council to address a problem that will not be easily solved, and to give residents a chance to do something positive and proactive about the problem.

CoGG has predicted it could take more than a year to solve the issues that have emerged following last week’s shutdown of SKM.

At its worst, that would mean as much as 30,000 tonnes of waste, which would ordinarily be recycled, going straight to landfill.

The cost to CoGG and, by extension, to its ratepayers is predicted to nudge $5 million.

CoGG is also planning other measures to limit that burden, but it’s move towards a selfsorting model puts an onus on residents to play a role in helping to solve the state’s recycling crisis.