Goondiwindi Region waste survey to help right recycling wrongs

Published on 18 December 2024

Goondiwindi Regional Council is taking an important step towards improving recycling rates across the region with a new initiative that will assess where recycling education should be targeted.

The project is funded by the Queensland Government’s Let’s Get It Sorted Partnership Program.

As part of the initiative, Council will co-ordinate a residential bin survey in January 2025 to inspect the volume, contents, and conditions of household bins. A random sample of bins will be collected as usual by the E&E Waste collection truck, then assessed at the waste facility before being disposed or recycled as normal.

The survey will assess current waste trends locally and determine areas where recycling efforts can be improved. The results will inform targeted education and resources to promote better waste practices across the region.

Cr Rob Mackenzie holds Council’s portfolio for waste and said the survey will provide valuable insights into recycling patterns, which will help refine waste management programs and education across the region.

"This funding will enable us to better understand what goes into our residential waste and recycling bins, allowing us to target where future education and resources are needed,” he said.

“This exercise is not about fining people or catching them out, so there will be no penalties as no individual households will be identified. It’s about working out some common areas where people are going wrong – any type of material that keeps wrongly popping up recycling bins for example – then we can be more specific going forward and help residents get it right.

"Ultimately, that means we can further reduce waste sent to landfill."

Council has engaged an external waste consultancy to conduct the waste audit.

To maintain the integrity of the survey, households will not be notified if their waste will contribute to the audit. All data will be anonymous to ensure privacy, with no individual property identified. There will be no fines or penalties distributed as a result of the survey.

The Let’s Get It Sorted Partnership Program aims to help to develop and deliver waste education and behaviour change intervention activities for households.