Talking trash in the Adelaide Hills

Results from a recent East Waste bin audit across seven Council areas has revealed how residents are managing waste well, as well as some key areas for improvement.

The audit included 227 bins from within Adelaide Hills Council area and here are the positives from our area:

• An average of 56.3% of resources were diverted from landfill by placing them in either the recycling or green organics bins.
• 21.2% of general waste bins was food waste which was lowest compared to other East Waste Councils.
• Contamination in the green food and garden organics bin was very low at 0.6%.
• 83.9% of garden organic materials found was placed correctly in the green bin.
• 75.5% of glass items found were placed correctly in the yellow lid recycle bin.

Where is the room for improvement we hear you ask! Here's the top 5:

• Make sure that compostable or recyclable materials are kept out. 58.8% of the material in the general waste to landfill bin have been recycled or composted.
• Place all food and compostable material in the green bin! Compostable items can be placed in loose, in a compostable bag or wrapped in newspaper. 39.4% of material found in general waste/landfill bins was compostable material.
• Compostable garden materials equated to 15.9%, which can be placed in the green bin, composted or mulched at home or taken to one of Council’s free green organics drop off days.
• Compostable soiled paper and cardboard (e.g. cardboard food containers) equated to 2.3% which can be placed in the green bin or composted at home.
• Place clean paper, cardboard, empty plastic, metal and glass containers in the yellow comingled recycling bin. 13.9% was recyclable material consisting of; 5.7% paper and cardboard, 3.4% hard plastics and 2.4% metals and 2.5% glass.

If you'd like to know more about how you can avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle and compost items visit the Adelaide Hills Council waste reduction webpage or the East Waste website, or pop into our service centres to find waste education resources.

If you’re not sure which bin to place something in, check out the Which Bin? website: whichbin.sa.gov.au