SORT IT OUT YOURSELF
DIY HUBS TO EASE RECYCLING CRISIS
GEELONG residents are being urged to sort their own recyclables and transport them to “recycling hubs” around town, in an effort to combat the state’s ongoing waste crisis.
The do-it-yourself recycling scheme comes as all five of the region’s councils are stuck sending kerbside recycling to landfill, after SKM Recycling stopped accepting recycling waste last week.
It is tipped the recycling shutdown could last more than a year.
GEELONG residents are being urged to sort their own recycling and transport it to “recycling hubs” around town, in an effort to combat the state’s ongoing waste crisis.
The do-it-yourself recycling scheme comes as all five of the region’s councils are stuck sending kerbside recycling to landfill, after SKM Recycling stopped accepting recycling waste last week.
It is tipped the recycling shutdown could last more than a year, which would likely send about 30,000 tonnes of Geelong’s kerbside recycling to landfill annually, at a cost to council of about $4.9 million.
City of Greater Geelong environment manager Rod Thomas said Geelong residents could bring sorted paper and cardboard, glass, metals and plastics to the North Geelong and Drysdale resource recovery centres, saving the waste from being dumped in landfill.
Mr Thomas said more of the “recycling hubs” were planned for the city during the SKM closure.
“We hope to put those in place in coming weeks,” he said. “They’ll be strategically places across the city so residents don’t have to drive to far to get to one.
“We want to give the community an option to continue recycling, even when SKM facilities are not functioning.”
Mr Thomas said the system was similar to that used in Europe and Japan, and would provide council with an opportunity to sell the sorted materials and lessen the financial impact of the waste crisis on Geelong.
Other recycling alternatives being explored by Geelong council include converting kerbside yellow bins to paper and cardboard only, providing an at-call service for recycling collection similar to hard waste collections, and finding alternative recycling facilities.
Implementation of the four recycling alternatives could prevent 75 per cent of kerbside recycling from being dumped in landfill council predicted, but Geelong director of city services Guy Wilson-Browne said it would probably be “a yearplus” before the alternatives could be brought into action.
Mayor Bruce Harwood has called on the State Government to urgently address the recycling crisis by making more of its Sustainability Fund available to councils.
The fund receives money collected through landfill levies, paid by councils and industrial waste contributors.
“We call on the State Government to draw from the more than half a billion dollar Sustainability Fund and invest in the infrastructure that will fix this crisis,” Cr Harwood said.
“Our State Government is sitting on half a billion dollars saying, ‘just put it into landfill while we sort this out’.
“This has been going for a couple of years now, so it’s disappointing to find ourselves where our only option is to landfill.
“We are now in the worstcase scenario we can be in.”
Cr Harwood said it was frustrating that a “very, very small portion” of the Sustainability Fund — which holds more than $400 million — had been made available to tackle the recycling crisis.
The latest SKM closure comes after the company’s South Geelong site reached capacity in February, forcing the region’s five councils to divert kerbside recycling to landfill for about a month — sending about 1600 tonnes of Geelong’s recycling to landfill at a cost of about $261,000.
Deakin University lecturer in hazardous materials management Trevor Thornton has predicted Geelong’s kerbside recycling could be dumped in landfill for more than a year if SKM Recycling collapsed.
“This really could be the thing that nearly breaks recycling,” Dr Thornton said.
He said all operators were at or near capacity. “I can’t see that anybody else would be able to really take kerbside recycling) in the shortto-medium time frame,” Dr Thornton said.
WE ARE NOW IN THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO WE CAN BE IN. MAYOR BRUCE HARWOOD, RIGHT