City of Ballarat to review kerbside rubbish collections

You might soon be sorting rubbish differently as the City of Ballarat reviews its waste kerbside collections. See the possible changes here.

How Ballarat residents’ rubbish is collected could soon change, as the city seeks to update its kerbside collections to reduce landfill waste and improve recycling.

The state government requires all councils to introduce a glass collection by 2027 and a food and garden organics collection by 2030.

In an effort to update its waste services, the City of Ballarat now wants residents to tell it what kerbside pickups they would prefer.

Depending on responses to the council survey, a new purple-lidded bin could end up at local households for the collection of glass as an alternative to the Pass on Glass drop-off program.

The Pass on Glass scheme, in which residents take their glass to drop-off sites, has resulted in more than 3800 tonnes of glass jars and bottles being recycled by businesses since the program’s inception in 2019.

Under the statewide changes, food scraps will be added to the Ballarat’s green-lid organics collection to keep as much compostable waste as possible out of landfill.

Ballarat Mayor Des Hudson encouraged residents to have their say on the city's rubbish collection.

Ballarat mayor Des Hudson said on Thursday that nearly half the contents of Ballarat’s tips could be recycled if it were more diligently sorted.

“We could be doing so much better in that space,” he said.

“About 46 per cent of our waste that’s going to landfill at the moment could be diverted into other streams and reused as compost and other materials.”

Adding food to the mix will require the council to invest in improved closed-off composting technology, rather than having garden rubbish decompose in the open air.

“I think there is lots for us to learn in terms of what other parts of the world are doing,” Cr Hudson said.

“Recycling and waste-to-energy has been something that the City of Ballarat has been talking about for a significant period of time, that we need to be better at gathering those valuable resources that can still be used in other alternatives.”

The survey, available at council sites and online, closes on December 18.

A draft waste collection plan with further detail will go before the council in early 2023.

More than 24,000 tonnes of waste from more than 49,000 Ballarat homes was sent to landfill in the 2021-2022 financial year.