The amount of rubbish Canberra households generate going to landfill each week has fallen by more than 15 per cent in the last eight years.
A fresh audit of Canberra's waste and recycling has revealed food waste going to landfill has also dropped, but soft plastics in the landfill bin have increased.
City Services Minister Chris Steel said the audit results also showed the government's trial of food and organic waste bin collections was working well to divert food waste from landfill in the Belconnen trial suburbs.
"Our most recent waste audit findings show that Canberrans are going to great lengths to reduce the amount of garbage going to the tip, which reduces these types of emissions compared to a similar analysis conducted almost a decade ago," Mr Steel said.
"The audit shows that the FOGO pilot is working as intended to significantly reduce the amount of material going into landfill."
Audited households participating in the food waste and organics bin trial were found to have 15.9 per cent of their rubbish to landfill made up from food waste.
Households not participating in the trial were found to have 27.6 per cent of their waste to landfill made up of food scraps and organics, down from 34.9 per cent in the 2014 audit.
The audit was completed by A.Prince Consulting and included a sample of waste collected from 700 households, including 350 detached houses and 350 flats.
The audit found contamination rates in the recycling bins sampled from multi-unit dwellings had risen sharply from 7.9 per cent to 21.7 per cent in 2022.
The contamination rate from recycling bins at detached houses was 7.4 per cent, while the rate from detached houses in the food waste collection trial area was 19 per cent.
Garden waste in landfill bins had fallen from 9.7 per cent of the contents to 3.4 per cent in 2022, largely attributable to the introduction of green waste kerbside collections city wide in 2019.
The total weight of rubbish collected from a household landfill bin has fallen from 9.8 kilograms to 8.2 kilograms in single-unit households and from 8.8 kilograms to 7.2 kilograms in multi-unit dwellings.
The audit found bins were fuller each week in areas with the food waste collection trial, with 34 per cent of landfill bins either full or overflowing, compared to 25 per cent full or overflowing in other parts of the city.
"Our ACT container deposit scheme introduced in 2018 has also likely had some benefits to the amount of kerbside recycling occurring in Canberra households with more eligible items being recycled outside of weekday collections," Mr Steel said.
The audit found an average of one eligible container deposit scheme container in landfill bins surveyed.
The government said the information from the audit was used to inform the design of trip facilities and other services in the territory.
"The data has helped to identify opportunities within the transfer stations for improved resource recovery, as well as measure the effectiveness of key initiatives such as the Container Deposit Scheme, the bulky waste collection service and the FOGO pilot," the government said.
"The findings from this audit will contribute significantly to future work in reducing Canberra's waste materials as the ACT government prepares to launch the ACT circular economy strategy."
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