Less waste sent to landfill with 4-bin service

18 Nov 2024

Give yourself a pat on the back, Merri-bek. In the first year of our 4-bin service, we’ve saved an extra 2,151 tonnes of household waste from landfill. That’s the weight of 531 elephants that has been turned into compost or recycled into new products! It takes us one step closer to our goal of zero waste by 2030.

Thanks to the hard work of everyone in our community, we’re also doing a better job of turning food waste into compost, instead of letting it go to landfill. 20% of the food and garden organics bin is now food waste, up from 5% in 2021.

We’ve improved the quality of recyclables in Merri-bek with the new purple glass recycling bin. 2,462 tonnes of your glass bottles and jars have been collected and recycled into new glass bottles and jars, right here in Victoria.

What changed?

Our 4-bin service started on 1 July 2023. It introduced the new glass recycling bin, weekly food and garden organics collections, and fortnightly collections for the yellow mixed recycling bins. These changes are part of the Victorian Government’s plan to make recycling the same across the state and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

Room for improvement

After a recent audit of kerbside bins, we found that contamination is still a challenge.

Contamination happens when the wrong items are put in the wrong bin. For example, a plastic bag in any of your recycling bins is contamination. We also lose valuable resources by putting them in the wrong bin, like food waste in your rubbish bin.

Here’s what we found from our recent audit:

  • Less than 5% contamination in the food and garden organics bin and glass recycling bin
  • 35% of what is in the general rubbish bin could be recycled or composted, including 24% food waste
  • 29% of what is in the mixed recycling bin is contamination and doesn’t belong in there.

While we’re happy that the community is doing well with the glass recycling bin and putting less food waste in their rubbish bins, there’s still more we can do.

Contamination costs us more and makes it harder to turn your recycling into new things.

When we put the right items in our bins, we help to keep valuable resources out of landfill so that they can be used again and again.

Recycle Right tips

  • Put your mixed recycling in the yellow bin loose, not in plastic bags
  • Keep soft plastics out of your recycling bins. Put them in the general rubbish bin instead
  • Your purple bin is for glass bottles and jars only
  • Put all other glass, like broken drinking glasses, mirrors and ceramics, in your general rubbish bin
  • Put your food and garden waste in the green bin loose
  • Do not use compostable or plastic bags in your green bin. Our organics processor, Veolia, do not accept compostable bags of any type.

Visit our Recycle Right page to update your recycling knowledge today.