Bunbury Harvey Regional Council (BHRC) Officers will make a visual inspection of the contents of all three bins.
The aim is to educate residents on the correct use of their three bins and provide individual feedback via bin tags, complete with a smiling or sad face depending on how correctly you have sorted the contents of your bins.
Recycling is a shared responsibility and everyone needs to work together to ensure the right thing is put in the right bin to create a high quality, clean compost, send less waste and recycling to landfill and reduce processing and disposal costs.
Bunbury Harvey Regional Council (BHRC) Officers make a visual assessment of the bins contents:
- Contamination
- A general overview of how each property is sorting their waste
- Identifying correctly used but overflowing recycling bins
- Identifying correctly used but overflowing general waste bins.
Officers will not be looking at any personal information but if you are concerned about placing sensitive documents in your recycling bin you can shred, tear up or wet and scrunch the documents and then place them into your FOGO bin for composting.
The tags are designed with happy and sad faces to indicate whether the bins are being used correctly or incorrectly. This includes details of which items were placed in the wrong bin and how to put the right thing in the right bin for next time.
- Details of the types and levels of contamination in each bin
- Results are reported on a community level, rather than individual properties
- Results determine what items and what bins require further promotion and education to correct behaviour and inform the residents.
Officers will not be looking at any personal information but if you are concerned about placing sensitive documents in your recycling bin you can shred, tear up or wet and scrunch the documents and then place them into your FOGO bin for composting.
The program focuses on education rather than enforcement. However, if repeated high-level contamination is identified after several visits to a property, the bin is taped shut to alert the waste collection driver not to empty it.
In the small number of these cases this has occurred, the Shire of Harvey contacts the resident to resolve the contamination issue.
Households and areas are chosen at random.
No. The Shire of Harvey secured funding support to assist with bin tagging through the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Account, administered by the Waste Authority. If contamination reduces by everyone putting the right thing in the correct bin, it will save the Shire money with a reduction in processing and disposal fees.