Six bins: New recycling solution could make bin night more crowded than ever
In order to address Australia’s recycling crisis, Aussie residents could be forced to separate their household waste into six different bins.
Infrastructure Victoria is pushing for the state Government to approve the separation of organics, plastics, paper and cardboard, glass and metals as well as rubbish as mixing the items leads to contamination.
Since China has made the decision to stop Australia from importing their waste into the country from 2018 due to contamination, landfill in Victoria has skyrocketed.
“The glass gets broken, paper and cardboard get tiny particles of glass in it ... they're so mixed up and contaminated and it's really hard to extract a high-value material that can be recycled,” project director at Infrastructure Victoria Elissa McNamara told the ABC.
“In the past, we've really been able to just set and forget.”
This is no longer an option as Infrastructure Victoria has had to expand the ways that the state is tackling the recycling crisis.
One action is implementing a “waste-to-energy” policy, which would see some food waste converted into low-emission electricity.
A report by Infrastructure Victoria placed emphasis on the importance of making better use of food waste after a bin audit uncovered that more than 35 per cent of the weight in household bins is food waste.
Another action that was suggested is promoting the use of more recycled products as well as banning single-use plastic bags across the state.
Statistics highlighting the recycling crisis in Victoria found that the state’s total waste has increased dramatically from 6.4 million tonnes in 2000 to 13.4 million in 2017-18.