Council 3 Bin System

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Bribie G

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There's talk of Moreton Bay council bringing in a 3 bin system. I note there are some 3 bin systems around Australia which may or may not be the same and wonder how you get on with this, if you live in such an area.

The proposed system is:

Current 2 bin system

Yellow Bin: recyclables such as newspapers, bottles, cans, metals, plastic etc - FORTNIGHTLY
Green Bin: everything else you can cram in - WEEKLY

Proposed 3 bin system

Yellow Bin: recyclables such as newspapers, bottles, cans, metals, plastic etc - FORTNIGHTLY
Red Bin: organics such as garden waste, food waste wrapped in paper BUT NOT IN PLASTIC BAGS, dog shit. This stuff will be converted into methane in a digester. WEEKLY
Green Bin: everything else like odd packaging, CDs, stuff that isn't recyclable, whatever FORTNIGHTLY


Sounds reasonable, but for every household this would surely cause a huge problem in a subtropical area like here. For example everyone (unless you have a worm farm) does the following:

Crack a couple of eggs: shells go in the kitchen binny lined with the plastic bag
Peel some potatoes.... peelings to in the binny
Find something off in the fridge, put in binny
After dinner, plate scrapings go in binny

Then when binny is getting full, pull out plastic bag and give it a twirl to seal it off and pop outside in Green bin.

With the new system, every step above you have to wrap the shit in paper (what paper, newspaper from the throwaway local papers?) and trek out to the RED bin.
The reason for - currently - plastic bagging then if necessary double bagging the kitchen waste is to stop it reeking around the street. So now I put prawn shells, rotten meat etc in newspaper and into the red bin with no plastic allowed and it's 34 degrees ....

I can see a nasty fug around the suburbs, especially with a lot more apartments being built in this council area. <_<

How do you guys get on elsewhere?
 
Compost bin does me for peelings and vege stuff mate. As for meat fish and stuff its plastic and the green bin. I reckon their idea is crap. Bunnings has compost bins for less than $30.00 and the garden loves it! I'll stick with our green and yellow here in Redlands.
 
food waste like meat / dairy seems a bad idea in the organics bin?

in Sydney (Mosman)

it was
green bin for garden waste (grass clippings and tree stuff etc) - every 2nd week
yellow for standard recycle- opposite week to green bin (every 2nd week)
red - house hold waste- every week

worked well and i often filled the green waste one

Here in Hawthorne (brisbane) they want us to opt in for higher household council rates to get the "garden waste bin" what a joke. i dont think i have seen one in my street and plenty of people can afford it around here ....

they should just force it on everyone if they want it to work
 
Weekly household waste collection here, every other week is the recycle bin or the green waste bin.
 
3 bin systems are pretty standard in NSW, though they discourage you from adding food waste and other putrescibles to the garden organics bin as this stuff is processed into garden mulch typically in a windrow system.

If your Council has a gas plant in the works so much the better, that'll mean a heap of stuff being diverted from land fill and there will be a useful bi product at the end of the process.

I wouldn't be overestimating the ability of a plastic bin bag to reduce odour, especially when it's hot. A bag of prawn heads in the sun will smell as bad as a newspaper roll of prawn heads in the sun. (in any case you can always freeze the prawn heads and then chuck them in the bin right before pickup)

Plastic bags cause all types of environmental problems, apart from the the obvious issues, when full tied full of garbage they clog the separators in the waste separation plant and this prevents waste being sorted properly, which increases the cost of processing quite a lot. So there are fairly good reasons to move away from bagging things up.
 
Anyone remember the days of the old backyard incinerator? I still remember erecting tiny villages guarded by plastic army men and Matchbox cars and conducting incendiary bombing raids using burning plastic on a stick. 'Don't come crying to me when you get burnt' dad would say. He was right. I still have the faint scars on my feet.
Try simulating that on your wii


What ever happened to those days?


Oh yeah...
Pollution, and shit..
 
We have a 3 bin system, but effectively it's a 3 bin system.

Green bin - weekly - all garden waste
Yellow bin - fortnightly - glass, paper, carboard, plastic
Red bin - weekly - all other garbage which is not recyclable.

In addition, the Council, at your request, give us a small kitchen bench bin and decomposable green plastic bags for food waste. That's meant to go to the Green Bin for composting.

However, all our compostable food scraps, peelings etc go to our own compost bins for the garden.
The Council green plastic bags we use for non-compostable food waste such as chop and steak bones, fat off cuts from our meat, prawn shells etc. We keep that in the freezer and get rid of it in the Green Bin when we fill a bag.

System works OK for us.

One thing I'd love to see is to outlaw the incredible mountain of junk mail we get each week. It's not unusual to a get centimeter thick pile of advertising a couple of times a week. The pile, amongst other things, will contain ads from Coles, Woolworth, Aldi, IGA, and Super IGA, along with other crap from their liquor outlets. Then we'll have stuff from Bing Lee, Harvey Abnormal, Good Guys etc, Dan Murphy, BCF, various furniture outlets, Aussie Post etc etc. Worst of all is the propaganda from our local pollies, especially that fool Oakeshite.
I'll believe the authorities are serious about the environment when they deal with this issue.
 
One thing I'd love to see is to outlaw the incredible mountain of junk mail we get each week. It's not unusual to a get centimeter thick pile of advertising a couple of times a week. The pile, amongst other things, will contain ads from Coles, Woolworth, Aldi, IGA, and Super IGA, along with other crap from their liquor outlets. Then we'll have stuff from Bing Lee, Harvey Abnormal, Good Guys etc, Dan Murphy, BCF, various furniture outlets, Aussie Post etc etc. Worst of all is the propaganda from our local pollies, especially that fool Oakeshite.
I'll believe the authorities are serious about the environment when they deal with this issue.

I've found my "no advertising material please" on the letterbox has practically eliminated this.
 
How much extra is this wonderful council going to charge on your rates for this wonderful value added service they will be providing is the question I'd ask, just curious as the recycling charges go up and the councils make more money where do we sit, more out of pocket.
 
How much extra is this wonderful council going to charge on your rates for this wonderful value added service they will be providing is the question I'd ask, just curious as the recycling charges go up and the councils make more money where do we sit, more out of pocket.


The alternative to the few hundred bucks a year you will pay to the council to come evey week and remove your rubbish, pales in comparison to sitting in your home surrounded by rubbish and rats and cholera etc.
 
The alternative to the few hundred bucks a year you will pay to the council to come evey week and remove your rubbish, pales in comparison to sitting in your home surrounded by rubbish and rats and cholera etc.


Only if you live like a grub, and I really don't think the councils are jumping on the recycle band wagon for our health.
There's big money to be made in recycling and the councils want their slice. I have no objections to the recycling drive it's just annoying that they use rate payers as free labor to sort this stuff and then charge us for the privilege.

At the moment our council use the Endeavor Foundation to sort the recycling, we have 2 bins one for general rubbish and one for all recyclables the Endeavor foundation are a group that help give independence to handicapped people through employment incentives. Add another 1 or 2 bins of sorted (for free by us) rubbish and they won't be required anymore.
The council not only saves money by cutting costs but makes more money in the process and we happily pay because it eases our environmental conscience by doing the "right thing".
 
Andrew, afaik, the usual recyclables still go in unsorted. They are just adding a green waste bin to the 2 you have. Trust me, it's quite regular down south for the man that comes to mow your lawn to put it in you bin.

It will actually save people that live in houses (not acreage lots etc) that currently pay to have their garden waste removed. It's quite a natural progression as plot sizes in cities grow smaller through subdivision and congestion.
 
:icon_offtopic:
Not the thread I was expecting..
I was expecting an all electric 3v system using green wheelie bins as HLT, Mash Tun and Kettle.
Could work for 200 liter batches

Oh well back to recycling
Chris
 
Only if you live like a grub, and I really don't think the councils are jumping on the recycle band wagon for our health.
There's big money to be made in recycling and the councils want their slice. I have no objections to the recycling drive it's just annoying that they use rate payers as free labor to sort this stuff and then charge us for the privilege.

At the moment our council use the Endeavor Foundation to sort the recycling, we have 2 bins one for general rubbish and one for all recyclables the Endeavor foundation are a group that help give independence to handicapped people through employment incentives. Add another 1 or 2 bins of sorted (for free by us) rubbish and they won't be required anymore.
The council not only saves money by cutting costs but makes more money in the process and we happily pay because it eases our environmental conscience by doing the "right thing".

You've probably never spent time in a city when the garbos went on strike? You just wouldn't believe how much stuff piled up, it was horrible.

Yes recycling was pretty much forced upon councils as a result of state/federal government policy shifts plus the enormous problems associated with landfill. There are also pretty large financial penalties (in NSW at least) for councils that fail to reach certain percentages of landfill reduction, so you probably wouldn't want to see that on your next rates notice either.

I think its fair enough that you sort out your rubbish, it is after all, yours. Everyone should take some level of responsibility for their waste.
 
Anyone remember the days of the old backyard incinerator? I still remember erecting tiny villages guarded by plastic army men and Matchbox cars and conducting incendiary bombing raids using burning plastic on a stick. 'Don't come crying to me when you get burnt' dad would say. He was right. I still have the faint scars on my feet.
Try simulating that on your wii

Haha I reckon I'm probably a bit younger than you - but thanks to growing up on property we always had the incinerator (which I also recall got out of control once and we nearly ended up with about 20 roast chooks as the incinerator was behind the chook shed). I too have the scars of melting plastic - though mine are on the backs of my hand not my feet.The good old days.

As for 3 bin system - we have one in Frankghanistan though I only have 2 bins as I havent opt'd for the 3rd "green waste bin". I dont do enough gardening to warrent paying what ever it is for a green waste bin and when I do do gardening I usually have way too much for a 240L bin so its easier to load up the 7x5 caged trailer and take it to the mornington transfer station where I thankfully get to drop it off using tip tickets from the inlaws.

What pisses me off is my councill has no waste facility. I have no where to dispose of used engine oil, old car batteries, radiator coolant etc. These things are ligitimately harmful to the environment but theres seemingly no where to dispose of these items so you end up with piles of the stuff in the garage. I've got about 120L of old engine oil at least 6 old car batteries. I know I can take the car batteries to the local battery guy who will pay me between $5 and $10 ea for them. But the used engine oil is an issue I have to either have more than 200L for a commerical oil collection company to come get it or I have to swap it into 20L containers and drop them off at the mornington waste station one at a time as they only allow household quantities.

Thye just make it difucult. Much like computer parts - they want you to recycle them but they dont tell you where to take them. FFS
 
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