The Yorke Peninsula Council provides services to help manage and reduce your waste. As a small committed Council looking after a fantastic natural playground and agricultural area how we manage our waste now will dedicate how our Peninsula communities live in the future.

Play your part with reducing, reusing and recycling waste

Do you really need to waste it?

The past five years have seen significant changes in the way waste is managed in South Australia. The “three bin system” has been progressively adopted in most local government areas and landfill sites have been converted to Waste Transfer Stations, with significant increases in dumping fees.

These changes were introduced by the State Government in response to growing concerns about various aspects of the waste to landfill paradigm, for example:

• the risks of land and water contamination
• the lack of suitable land for new landfill sites or the expansion of existing site
• the opportunities lost by not recycling items that can be re-used; for example, the use of recycled materials in manufacturing cuts down on the amount of energy and raw materials needed

It’s not easy to change old habits but here are some handy tips if you find your waste and recycling bins are filling ahead of each collection day and you wish to avoid costly trips to the dump.

For information on how to recycle use the suburb search available at Can I Recycle This?

Top tips

Tip 1: Compost food items and other biodegradable waste

As much as half of the waste collected in rubbish bins each week could be recycled as compost and garden mulch, reducing the amount of ‘mucky’ waste in the bin and saving $$.

 

Tip 2: Where possible buy products with minimal packaging

Suggestions:

• buy in bulk
• avoid buying mega-sized packets containing numerous smaller packets (e.g. potato crisps, biscuits)
• buy 2 litre or larger bottles of fruit juice and decant into drink bottles at home rather than buying quantities of the small ‘tetra-paks’
• avoid buying fruit and veg on plastic covered polystyrene trays

Tip 3: Think of practical uses for everyday items that you might otherwise discard

Suggestions:

• empty margarine and ice-cream containers are ideal for food storage
• meat trays make good seed beds
• wash ‘snap lock’ plastic bags to re-use over and over

Browse the Recycling Near You website for more great ideas.

Tip 4: Make use of other avenues for recycling goods

Suggestions:

• Many Australia Post Offices will accept used mobile phones and printer cartridges for recycling
  
• Donate used clothes, books and household goods to charity, secondhand shops or community fundraising stalls; local salvage merchants will accept a wide range of hard refuse including electrical items, scrap timber and iron.

To find out where to recycle other items look up the Green Industries Recycling Information Directory.

Tip 5: Join with neighbours or friends to stage a ‘mega’ garage sale, or to fill a trailer for taking to the dump