The ACT government does not intend to dump recycling it is storing in the wake of a major fire at its main sorting facility, but has not ruled that out.
Recycling collections will continue as normal, after a fire tore through the Materials Recovery Facility in Hume on Monday evening.
The items will be stored at Mugga Resource Management Center while other arrangements are made, City Services Minister Chris Steel said on Tuesday.
The government is hoping to transport recyclables to Sydney to be sorted but negotiations with Re.group, the contractor which runs the ACT facility, are still ongoing.
Katherine Harrington, a senior director at the ACT government's NoWaste unit, acknowledged that storage at the Mugga Lane tip was not infinite.
"That's correct, so what we're going to need to do is look at what other ... materials recovery facilities that we can actually look at to take these materials and where the capacity for that is," she told ABC radio on Wednesday morning.
"So that's what we're in the process of doing at the moment."
Asked about whether recyclables could be dumped, Ms Harrington did not rule it out.
"It's not the intention at this stage, we are putting those alternative arrangements in place."
"What I'm saying at the moment is we are asking residents to continue recycling as usual, and what we are exploring are those opportunities and the options for continuing recycling that material."
Canberrans are being asked to put their yellow recycling bins out as normal, despite the centre that manages their contents being extensively damaged by fire.
The Materials Recovery Facility in Hume sorts, compresses and bails recyclables from Canberrans' yellow bins, and the building has been written off. The government is planning a replacement facility soon, and will now try to bring these plans forward. However, a new centre would be some way off.
There was about 150 tonnes of recycling in the facility when it caught fire, and this time of year usually has a larger than normal volume going through the centre. This is partly as people are cleaning out their homes while on leave, and also for the packaging from Christmas gifts.
The centre processes material from Canberra and the nearby region.
"The Hume Materials Recovery Facility is one of the largest in Australia and processes approximately 60,000 tonnes per year of commingled recycling received from the ACT and several NSW local councils," according to the ACT government.
Earlier this year, the ACT said it expected tenders for the development to go out before the end of 2022, with design and construction expected to take around 18 months.
It's hoped a new recovery facility, responsible for sorting the contents of Canberra's yellow bins, will take ACT recycling from 5 per cent contamination to 2 per cent, levels considered crucial for building Australia's waste reprocessing industry.
Advanced optical sorters and robotics will be required new equipment, reducing manual labour for the few employees who currently sort recycling by hand.
What if I have excess recycling over the holidays?
Canberra does have drop-off points for excess recycling. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the centres are located in Tuggeranong, Phillip, Gungahlin, Mitchell and Belconnen. They accept anything generally dropped into yellow wheelie bins, including oversized cardboard boxes, glass bottles and jars, aluminium and steel cans and plastic bottles and containers.
Those facilities are located at:
- Jolly Street, Belconnen View map
- 3 O'Brien Place, Gungahlin View map
- 22-26 Baillieu Circuit, Mitchell View map
- 38 Botany Street, Phillip View map
- Scollay Street, Tuggeranong View map
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