Indigo Shire Council residents recycled 376.06 tonnes of recycling in the first five months of this year and in February this year had a 92 per cent resident participation rate of recycling.  

Indigo Shire Council Waste Management Officer Mr Mark Greene said that Council’s contractor Cleanaway offered a fortnightly recycling service to residents in the allocated 240 litre yellow lid bins.

“Most people do not know what happens to the items they place in their bins once they are collected by Cleanaway and once recycled items are collected from Indigo Shire Council households, the journey for the recycled items just begins,” he said. 

“All recyclable items go together into the recycle bin, collected by the collection truck and are transported to the Cleanaway ‘Materials Recovery Facility” in Wodonga where they are then sorted and bailed.

“From here they are then transported to various processors and ready to be manufactured into new products such as outdoor plastic garden furniture, piping, glass bottles and plastic containers.”

Mr Greene said it was important to be sure that all products that are placed in the recycle bin were recyclable.

He said not all plastic containers were recyclable so people needed to check the base of the container and look for the recycle symbol with a number 1,2,3,4,or 5 in it to determine if it is a recyclable product.

Further information on what can be placed in recycle bins is available from Indigo Shire Council or Cleanaway.

“People can help the process by rinsing all recyclable containers before they put them into their bin, take plastic lids and put them into the garbage and flatten milk containers and cardboard boxes to save on space,” Mr Greene said.

“Aluminium cans can be recycled back into either new drink cans or engine blocks for new vehicles. Recycling also ‘rescues’ those resources that were used to make the product in the first place from being lost in landfill and once they are in the landfill they can no longer be used.

“Recycling conserves our valuable resources and lessens environmental impact because fewer areas need to be affected by resource extraction. Recycling processes may also use less energy and water than is used in the extraction of raw materials.”

Items you can recycle:

• Glass bottles and jars
• Aluminium and steel cans, aerosols and foil containers
• Plastic plant pots, plastic milk, juice, soft drink and detergent bottles with codes 1, 2 and 3
• Ice cream, margarine and yogurt containers with codes 4 and 5
• Newspapers, paper bags, magazines, cardboard boxes (crush and tear cardboard boxes to prevent jamming), letters, envelopes, advertising material, work and school papers and telephone books.

No plastic bags, no green waste, no food waste, no polystyrene and no nappies are to be placed in the recycle bin.

Up to 30% of our rubbish can be recycled but placing non recyclables in recycling bins, therefore contaminating the contents, can result in some recyclables ending up in landfill instead of a recycling facility.