City of Mount Gambier, South Australia, has introduced a small scale recycling system in the Civic Centre foyer for bread tags, plastic bottle lids, used toothbrushes and empty toothpaste tubes.
Environmental Sustainability Officer, Aaron Izzard, said, “Many people want to recycle as much as they can and through this system Council is offering a convenient location to dispose of these items that are otherwise difficult to save from landfill given they are too small to put in your recycling bin at home.
“It is particularly exciting that we are now able to collect the bread tags and plastic lids as they are being turned into new products right here on the Limestone Coast.
Plastic bottle lids labelled with a number two or four in the triangle recycling symbol will be recycled locally through Tenison Woods College’s ‘Precious Plastic’ program.
“The lids collected at the Civic Centre will be passed on to the college where students will shred and melt them down and turn them into new items like stencils and tiles.”
The bread tags will be provided to St Martin’s Lutheran College to be recycled through the Aussie Bread tags for Wheelchairs program.
“Once the bread tags have been sorted into various colours by the St Martin’s students, they will be taken to Transmutation at Robe where they will be turned into new products like their unique bread tag bowls.”
The toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes will be sent off for specialised recycling through TerraCycle’s oral care recycling program.
“In the future we hope to be able to expand our offering of ways to responsibly dispose of items that can’t currently be recycled through the kerbside system.”
