Resilient Wyndham currently guides our waste management. It builds on the direction of the Waste and Litter Strategy 2016 – 2040. Council is now working on developing strategic actions until 2030 which is the reason for this community engagement. You can read more about Resilient Wyndham here.

The Resilient Wyndham strategy outlines our waste management targets as follows:

• 20 per cent reduction in the waste we generate at home by 2030

• Halve household food waste to landfill by 2030

• 90 per cent of the waste we generate at home is kept out of landfill

• Wyndham residents are recycling right by 2030 (with only 5 per cent contamination)

The intention of the new strategic direction is to keep to these targets.

Our performance has not changed much since the adoption of Resilient Wyndham. However, at the time we were dealing with COVID-19 which affected our ability to meet targets. Now that most things have returned to normal, we are more determined than ever to make significant improvements towards achieving these targets.

Waste is a resource and managing it effectively is good for the environment and makes economic sense.

In Wyndham, the average garbage bin contains 27% recyclable packaging and 49% of the garbage bin is organic waste (mostly food), which release harmful greenhouse gas emissions when deposited to landfill. Over 20% of the recycling bins are made up of contamination (items that should not be there). It is important for the community to understand how to use bins correctly and to avoid littering and dumping.

Council collected 8,146 tonnes of litter / dumped rubbish in 2023/24. Encouraging residents and visitors to use Wyndham’s waste and litter services in the right way is important to keep these numbers down as well as to minimise the impact on the natural environment and maintain a healthy city.

In a year Wyndham collects more than 5.3 million garbage bins, 2.5 million recycle bins and 712,643 green waste (FOGO) bins. During 2023-24, an average of 131kgs of garbage was collected per household, while 42.7kg of recycling and 71.9kg of food and garden waste per household was recovered.

Additionally, Wyndham undertook over 62,500 hard waste collections and over 8,000 tonnes of litter and dumped rubbish was collected during 2023-34. Wyndham has also delivered 173 waste and litter education programs with more than 9,000 participants.

• Hard and green waste collection services
• Tip tokens, including the option to exchange hard and green waste services for tip tokens and vice versa
• Kerbside bin service for waste, recycling and organic/food
• Drop off hubs for the reuse and recycling of clothing and e-waste, such as electronics and batteries
• Community recycling stations for light bulbs, batteries, mobile phones, printer cartridges, CD/DVDs and X-Rays
• A transfer station for recycling and disposal of most household items
• Collecting and disposing of waste from litter and recycling bins located in public spaces
• The enforcement and collection of dumped rubbish
• Street sweeping of residential and commercial precincts

You can read more about our Waste Services here.

Wyndham runs a variety of in-person and online education programs. This includes events where residents can drop-off items such as e-waste at local collection points, clean-up activities, workshops and incursions and rebate programs.

These initiatives aim to promote the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle, encourage waste reduction, support a circular economy, advise on correct recycling and best waste management practices, and increase community awareness of different council waste services.

A list of some of these programs can be found here.

Of the 46 Council services and facilities included in the survey, residents stated that the weekly garbage collection had the highest importance and satisfaction levels and that the recycling collection had the second highest importance and satisfaction levels, both with an average importance of 9.2 out of 10 and average satisfaction of 8.4 out of 10.

The green waste collection, hard waste collection and Council’s response to dumped rubbish were deemed the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th most important services respectively, with an average satisfaction of 8.3, 8.1 and 7.5 respectively.

The maintenance and cleaning of public areas was the 7th most important with an average satisfaction of 7.5 out of 10.

These responses were all up from the previous year. This shows that residents value waste services very highly and are generally highly satisfied with the services Council provides.

By 2030 or earlier the State Government will require Wyndham City and all municipalities to collect food and garden organics from all households with the use of green-lid bins.

The State Government also introduced the Container Deposit Scheme, which recycles cans and bottles, and is proposing new arrangements such as the four-bin system (to include a glass (purple lid) bin) by 2027.

There is also a state-wide ban on putting electronic waste (including batteries) in kerbside bins.

Council is proposing to supply a Food and Garden Organics (green lid) bin to all Wyndham households in early 2026, in keeping with State Government requirements.

The State Government is proposing to make glass (purple lid) bins a requirement for all households by 1 July 2027.

Almost half of Wyndham's household landfill waste, or 30,000 tonnes per year, is organic materials that could be diverted from landfill and over 70% of this organic material is food waste.

Introducing Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) bins to all households is a key initiative that will be critical to working towards Council's waste targets and complying with Victorian Government requirements.

Council currently provides an optional fortnightly green waste bin collection service to over 47,000 households.

Almost 14,000 tonnes of organic waste was collected in 2023-24. Since 2016, residents have been able to dispose of garden waste and fruit and vegetable scraps via this service.

From July 2024 residents could put all food waste into this bin to divert more waste from landfill.

In the normal recycling bins (yellow lid) glass can break and get stuck in the cardboard and plastic, which then can be harder to separate.

Glass bins may make all streams cleaner meaning they could be recycled better.

Most recycling processors, including Wyndham’s are set up to handle glass from yellow lidded recycling bins or purple lidded glass bins.

At this stage residents cannot put any form of plastic bags (even compostable ones) in these bins.

Paper bags are allowed for lining kitchen caddies but they cannot have any plastic, wax, coats or treatments or be tied closed (they must remain open).

Small amounts of paper towel are acceptable as long as it has no chemicals or cleaning products on it.

Council proposes to provide a fortnightly Food and Garden Organics (green lid) bin collection service to all Wyndham households in early 2026.

After this, Council will review the uptake of the service and consider whether collection frequencies could change to reduce the amount of organic waste being landfilled.

Public consultation will inform these considerations.

Yes, we use Veolia to recycle our Food and Garden Organic waste. Read more information about Veolia here.

Yes, we use Visy to recycle the items collected via our recycling bin service in Wyndham. Read more about Visy here.

In a nutshell there’s three key parts to a circular economy which aims to create an economic model that protects and supports the environment, addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and other environmental concerns. These are:

• thinking about how to reuse and recycle materials at design stage, to reduce waste and pollution before items are created

• Reusing and recycling

• Ensuring that no materials are wasted or that their value or use is reduced

Product Stewardship is an environmental management strategy that means whoever designs, produces, sells, or uses a product takes responsibility for minimizing the product's environmental impact throughout all stages of the product’s life cycle, including end of life management.

The greatest responsibility lies with whoever has the most ability to affect the full life cycle environmental impacts of the product. This is most often the producer of the product, though all within the product chain of commerce have roles.

You can read more here.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to revolutionise the way we live, providing efficiencies in most aspects of our society. For waste management, AI could help in a range of ways such as catching illegal dumpers, ensuring the right services are being provided to the right households and ensuring waste services are provided as efficiently as possible to save rate payers money.

If there’s an item you want to dispose of or recycle, search for the item on our website at: https://www.wyndham.vic.gov.au/services/waste-recy...

The zero waste map indicates where items such as oil can be disposed of (at the tip) and vapes (disposed at e-waste centres as it has a battery) and spray nozzles go to landfill.

The State Government is supporting trials of soft plastic recycling. Currently there is not enough demand for collections in Wyndham however we will continue to lobby for product stewardship and authentic recycling of these products in Wyndham.

The majority of tip fees goes to State Government as part of the Landfill Levy, and the remaining amount is used to manage the tip and ensure it is compliant with EPA requirements.

Bin straps are unlikely to assist in the containment of litter from bins. Bins that have lids that close, do their job well. Litter often escapes when bins are overfilled and in this instance a strap would not help.

Additionally, if bins are blown over it is unlikely that a bin strap would keep the lid closed.

Recycle Smart is a private company that specialises in the transportation of waste from households to local recycling facilities. This company offers services at a cost to councils, businesses and individuals.

Council provides many other services to meet these needs including its kerbside bin and hard waste services, tip tokens and community recycling stations.

Therefore, Council has not subscribed to such a service on behalf of households as it is not the best use of rate payers’ money.