Zero Waste Household

Wollongong council supplies three bins - red (garbage), yellow (recycling) and green (garden waste) bins. The red is collected weekly the other two alternate fortnights. Annual Rates are levied according to the size of the red bin - 80L = $313, 120L = $411, 240L = $677. Generally households are supplied with the 120L red bin.

I know people in the UK can put soft plastics in their recycling but here you cannot put soft plastics (packaging, clingwrap etc) in the yellow bin however Woolworths have container for recycling soft plastics. Since I discovered this my garbage has been reduced to virtually nothing and I haven't put my red bin out for weeks at a time. Even my yellow bin rarely goes out more than once a month.

This was my weekly garbage BEFORE I started recycling soft plastics:


I wish they had a 0L red bin for $0.00 because saving less than $2 per week by taking one of the 80L bins hardly seems worth the effort.

BTW My green bin never goes out because I compost all my green waste.

Do you live in a zero waste household? or how close are you?

Re: Zero Waste Household

I should mention that today is the first day my red bin has gone out this month. It contains an old umbrella, a broken children's plastic toy and, because it was going out, I emptied my vacuum cleaner into it.

Re: Zero Waste Household

We have two bins:

Black for Household Waste.
Green for Garden Waste.
White sack for Paper and Cardboard.

No charges.

Collection only once a fortnight.

Re: Zero Waste Household

You make me feel ashamed Bruce ....I have two bins one general waste emptied every week.....always nearly full but I have to admit I sneak garden waste in it too and another for recycling emptied every fortnight and that's always full.

I don't have room in my garden for composting so I take most garden waste to the tip myself I think they take it to landfill....I would love a bigger garden.

We should all be like you but I have no idea how you manage just one small bag.... I'm a failure

Re: Zero Waste Household

We have one black bin for general waste.
One green bin for garden waste.
One black box for glass.
One black box for paper/cardboard.
One green box for plastic and tin.

It is rare for any of mine to more than a third full.

Re: Zero Waste Household

Here in Edinburgh we have a green wheelie bin for recycling but this is fraught with danger as so much of what you think should be recyclable actually isn't.
A grey bin for landfill,
A small food waste caddy.
A brown bin for garden waste which the council have just started to charge an extra £25 per year to empty which has meant that lots of people are nor sticking there grass cuttings ETC in the bottom of other bins rather than pay the extra. In my block of six flats it was agreed that we could make do with one bin and share the cost. I say we agreed, the older residents agreed and paid up, the two younger residents decided to ignore the issue.

Re: Zero Waste Household

Not at all and I refuse to feel guilty, we even have a medical waste bin goes out weekly, ive given up recycling rubbish since they made the bins so hard to get to and use, im not standing out there in the carpark posting one item at a time into a post box size slit for anyone. One black bag every two days they take the big paladins away fortnightly.

Re: Zero Waste Household

We recycle as much as possible but still end up with more landfill than recycling, although to be fair, the landfill stuff is only collected every three weeks so it adds up. It normally contains three weeks worth of cat litter which makes it very heavy.

Re: Zero Waste Household

Don't you pay council rates at all?

Re: Zero Waste Household

I was surprised that some of you get your garbage collected for free which perhaps partially explains my extortionate annual council rate bill of $1490 a year (£740 p/a). Bastards!

As you can see we also have to pay for storm water management I think that is different to the UK because I think your stormwater ends up in the sewers whereas it is illegal to put stormwater into the sewers here. Every so often the water board goes round pumping smoke into the sewers, woe betide any house with smoke coming out of their guttering.