Waste education officer Sam Holt shows children how to categorise their trash. Photo: Erin Hee.
Wagga Council is aiming to reduce the amount of waste residents send to landfill by taking part in an initiative called Halve Waste.
Under the Federal Goverment’s National Waste Policy Plan, there is a target to recover 80 per cent of all waste – meaning it’s recycled, reused or used to produce energy.
Gregadoo Waste Management Centre facilities manager Andrea Baldwin said Wagga recovered around 56 per cent currently, and aimed to match other local councils with “close to” 60 per cent resource recovery by 2030.
“We’re nowhere near [the national 80 per cent target] at this point in time, and that won’t happen immediately,” she said.
“It will take quite a few years to achieve that. You’ll find that a lot of the councils in our area are doing close to 60 per cent resource recovery.
“So by 2030 our aim is to actually get up around that 60 per cent resource recovery as an interim measure.”
Halve Waste started as a regional campaign to help communities recycle more, reduce landfill and make the most of local waste and recycling services.
Wagga Wagga City Council (WWCC) will join 17 councils across the Riverina and Murray regions to drive better waste outcomes for residents and businesses, and will roll out tailored education and initiatives across the city.
“Education plays a large part in those small steps,” Ms Baldwin said.
“Making sure we have educators in our school environments, going out and talking to the community and having that engagement is really important.
“So whether you live in Berrigan or Wagga or Hay, everyone actually knows what to put into their bins and making sure that we’re all striving to achieve these resource recovery goals.”
Mayor Dallas Tout believes different age cohorts will respond to different initiatives.
“I think it’s more about making sure we finesse our education program to the different co-ops in the community,” he said.
“You will approach an older group of people more differently than you would [children].
“If we do that and we personalise or make them unique for each group we’re talking to, then their behaviour will change once they understand the benefits of what we do.”
Following cuts to recycling initiatives earlier this year, Ms Baldwin believes recycling options need to be based locally, “rather than sending them off to Melbourne or Sydney”.
“At the moment, a lot of those initiatives are not locally based, and therefore the transport cost is actually quite expensive,” she said.
“We do rely on the community also undertaking some of these key initiatives themselves.
“We need to look at the things that are going to be impactful and make a difference in our landfill and therefore, by picking those key initiatives that are more volume and something that we can make a real impact in is probably our focus.
“Moving forward, NSW EPA has a mandate that commercial food waste cannot go to landfill in the future. So council will need to consider its position on that. But at this point in time, that’s not an imminent item that we need to worry about.
“What we’re doing is making sure that we’ve got some consistent messaging.
“There’s a real focus to make sure that our curbside services and anything we do in the waste and resource recovery sector makes improvements.”
