THE Coffs Coast Waste Audit results are in and reveal the need to improve our waste disposal at the home level to reduce what is sent to landfill.

The results show that almost 40 percent of the items going in the red bin actually belong in the green bin.

By putting it in the green bin it can be made into compost by the Council or at home with a composting tool.

But in the red bin it ends up in landfill.

MidWaste Coordinator Ali Bigg said Coffs Harbour, Bellingen and Nambucca residents are great at recycling but there is definitely room to improve with their composting.

“Any food scraps and garden waste in our red bin ends up in landfill where it breaks down and produces greenhouse gases that are costly to manage and dangerous to the environment,” Ms Bigg said.

“Only thirty eight percent of the loose food waste found in kerbside bins was found where it should be – in the green bin.

“That means most of our food scraps are landing in the wrong bin and we’re wasting the opportunity to turn them into valuable compost for use on local parks, gardens and farms.”

By comparison the best Council audit result in NSW was close to eighty percent for correctly placing items in their green bin rather than the red bin.

“If we all did the right thing and put all our food scraps into the green bin, we could divert an additional fifty seven tonnes of food waste from landfill every year and prevent more than one hundred and thirty tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.”

To make it easy for residents to collect their food scraps from the kitchen for the green bin, Coffs Harbour, Bellingen and Nambucca Valley Councils have teamed up with MidWaste to provide residents with free kitchen caddies as part of the Let’s Get Composting Coffs Coast campaign.

Head to www.letsgetcomposting.org.au to find out where to get yours.

These three Council areas generate about sixty seven thousand tonnes of waste every year, with each household generating around twenty seven kilograms every week – that’s 1.4 tonnes a year or the weight of a family car.

Have you got your discounted green waste and compost items yet?

 

By Sandra MOON