Residents in the Kempsey Shire on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales are benefiting from Australia’s first Mobile Community Recycling Centre (CRC).
The free service is reducing illegal dumping and the stockpiling of problem household wastes throughout the Shire.
Kempsey Shire Council received funding of $29,000 to design and create the CRC trailer, through the State Government Waste Less Recycle More initiative administered by the NSW Environmental Protection Authority and Environmental Trust.
The trailer, which visits 16 locations across the shire on a regular rotation, has collected over 65 tonnes of material since its launch in February 2015. Waste collected includes batteries, smoke detectors, gas bottles, paints, oils, e-Waste, fluoro globes and polystyrene.
Council has a dedicated staff member from the waste team who is responsible for driving and setting up the trailer, collecting the waste and returning it to the Waste Management centre for storage and collection.
According to Council’s Coordinator of Civic Services, Steve Pellen, part of the project’s success has been this community interface.
“The community education component of the mobile recycling centre has been really vital in ensuring long term success.
“An approachable and knowledgeable staff member who can build rapport with people who might stop by to ask questions or find out about the trailer has led to people then looking out for it and bringing their waste along on the next visit.
“The trailer is providing a really important service to our community and helping not only ensure that the right waste is captured in the right place, but educating our residents along the way.”
The Mobile Community Recycling Centre won the 2015 IPWEA Engineering Excellence Award for innovation in the three R’s – Recovering, Recycling and Reusing – and was recently displayed at the 2016 Waste Management conference in Coffs Harbour.
Mr Pellen said the program could easily be implemented in other council areas.
“Councils from all over Australia were interested to see the trailer as it’s such a cost effective way of making a significant reduction in problem waste.
“There’s a lot of interest in replicating this program in other local government areas, which is a fantastic outcome for the industry.”
