Last year the City of Boroondara recycled more than half of the total waste generated in the municipality – putting it on track to meet the Victorian Government’s target of 65 per cent of domestic waste to be recycled by 2014.
The 51 per cent rate of diversion was achieved in 2006/07 when Council collected 23,464 tonnes of recyclables including 237 tonnes of E-waste, 305 tonnes of steel and 12,247 tonnes of green waste.
To assist residents to recycle more, Council provides a number of recycling services including:
- weekly household recycling
collections for all rigid plastics, glass
bottles, aluminium and steel cans,
paper and cardboard - fortnightly green waste collections and
free disposal of green waste - transfer station facilities to recycle
green waste, motor oils, car and
domestic batteries, tyres, light globes,
mattresses, disused household
appliances and E-waste.
Many products are produced, and valuable resources are recovered from materials sent to recyclers.
These include:
- mulch, compost, soil enhancers and
potting mix - manufacture of new plastic, steel,
aluminium, paper and cardboard
products from kerbside collected
recyclables - recovery of precious metals from
electronic waste and steel appliances - recovery of timber, steel and rubber from the recycling of mattresses.
E-waste a great success
E-waste in Boroondara does not need to go to landfill, thanks to a unique scheme introduced by Council in 2005. This free computer recycling service, Byteback™, has been a great success with more than 775 tonnes of computer waste collected to April this year, equivalent to 102,418 items recycled, comprising:
- 20,981 desktops
- 27,727 monitors
- 9,963 printers
- 227 servers
- 1,318 laptops
- 42,202 miscellaneous items such
as keyboards, mouses, speakers, fax
machines, scanners, modems, cables
and power racks.
Residents can drop their E-waste at a local transfer station, where it is transported to an E-waste recycler and broken down into its components mainly plastics, steel and precious metals for recycling.
Byteback™ recycles 97 per cent of computer waste, meaning that heavy metals do not end up as toxic waste in landfill.
Waste tours
The City of Boroondara encourages people to recycle their household waste as much as possible by showing them just where their waste ends up. Residents can take free ‘waste tours’ to follow their recyclables and other wastes on special tours hosted by Boroondara City Council and VISY Recycling.
The waste tours start at the Boroondara Transfer Station, go to the municipal landfill site and finish at the VISY recycling sorting facility.
Three tours are run every September.
