At the October 2018 Council Meeting, Council adopted the Recycling and Waste Management Strategy 2018-2027, noting the need to maintain ongoing engagement with the community to support the introduction of a Food Organics Green Organics (FOGO) kerbside collection service in 2019/20. The minutes from the Council Meeting are available on Council's Website.

The endorsed Strategy is available here

Dealing with waste is one of the biggest challenges faced by councils and communities across Australia – how to refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle rather than burying our rubbish in landfill.

We are seeking community feedback on a range of issues to inform the development of a new plan to improve Bayside’s recycling and reduce waste into the future.

We are developing a Recycling and Waste Management Strategy to guide Council services and education programs.

The aim of the strategy will be to increase recycling and reduce the amount of waste Bayside produces and sends to landfill.

Our target is to reduce the amount of waste Bayside sends to landfill by 60% in 2020 and 75% by 2025.

Council collects more than 45,000 tonnes of waste and recycling material every year. 22,000 tonnes is recyclable plastics, paper, glass, metals and garden materials. The remaining 23,000 tonnes goes into landfill.

Sending waste to landfill costs us financially as well as environmentally.

Victoria’s landfill sites are literally filling up and state government landfill charges are increasing. These costs are passed on to Bayside ratepayers directly via the Waste Service Charge on rates notices.

The environmental cost is increasing too. Discarded food breaking down in landfill produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas more damaging than CO2 that contributes to climate change. Landfill waste can also potentially contaminate land, groundwater and freshwater streams.

Almost 50% of the waste Bayside households send to landfill is food waste. Approximately 10% of this is unopened food, still in its packaging!

And Bayside households throw away 14% more food than other Victorians – adding up to a significant cost.

Reducing and recycling food waste represents a significant opportunity to cut the amount of waste we send to landfill.

Council is proposing to include food waste into our current garden waste bin. Food such as vegetable/fruit scraps, bread, pasta, cereal, rice, soft meat, dairy, egg shells etc could be included.

Many of these items can be composted. If you already compost, keep going! You will be able to use food waste recycling for non compostable items - oranges, meat, bread etc.

We want to understand community views on food waste recycling service to use in our planning.

Bayside households can book up to two hard waste collections per calendar year – additional collections are available for a fee. In 2017, 18,948 hard waste bookings were made by Bayside’s 40,000 households.

Bayside adopted an on-demand hard waste booking service in 2014. Customer Satisfaction Research in 2018 highlighted a high degree of community satisfaction with the service. There are no plans to change the on-demand nature of the service.

Annually, Bayside’s hard waste collection includes:

• 2,137 tonnes of general waste sent to landfill
• 297 tonnes of e-waste sent to e-waste recycling processors
• 7,860 mattresses sent to mattress recyclers
• 5,500 bookings for bundled branches and prunings which is recycled into organic mulch for Victorian agriculture

Household furniture such as couches, wooden items, toys, carpet, soft furnishing timber, household tools/equipment cannot be recycled by Council’s hard waste contractors and end up in landfill after collection.

We want to understand community views on how to reduce the amount of hard waste going to landfill.

The recycling industry internationally is experiencing significant change.

While recyclables from Bayside households are continuing to be processed by our contractors, the cost of recycling has dramatically increased.

Waste charges are set on a cost recovery basis. Whereas Bayside previously received $500,000 per annum from recycling, Council has faced cost of $1.7 million for 2018/2019. This has resulted in a one-off increase of 40% in the Waste Service Levy for 2018/2019.

Bayside households produce 22,000 tonnes of recyclable plastics, paper, glass, metals and garden materials each year.

While recycling materials rather than sending them to landfill is an important element of our waste processing, the manufacture and recycling process still uses a great deal of energy. Wherever we can, we must reduce our use of packaging, plastics and other single use materials.

Council advocates on waste and recycling issues with other levels of government and agencies on behalf of the Bayside community.

This includes partnering with other Councils to develop regional solutions for the recycling and waste reduction/recovery using new technology.

This includes recovering resources such as heat, electricity, fuels (solid, liquid, gas) and recyclable residues rather than burning or burying waste.

Bayside City Council is a member of the Metropolitan Waste Resource Recovery Group which provides opportunities for Bayside to participate in future new technology regional solutions to diverting our waste from landfill.

Council also advocates on behalf of the Bayside community on recycling and waste issues.
We have lobbied the State government on issues such as a ban on single use plastic bags, funding to support the development of new recycling technology via the state Government’s Sustainability