They take green waste seriously at Lake Macquarie City Council.
In the six years the council has managed its "green bin" driven strategy of encouraging residents to put their food and organic garden (FOGO) waste in green bins for weekly kerbside pick-up, the council has distributed free-of-charge 88million individual compostable green bags for households to use for green food waste disposal.
In those six years since Lake Macquarie began the weekly pick-up of green kerbside bins, they've diverted 230,000 tonnes of food and organic waste from the council's landfill at Awaba.
There's been a 43 per cent reduction in organic waste in household general waste red bins at the Lake.
"Getting organics out of landfill is one of the easiest things that people can do at home, even more effective than recycling at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from being produced," said Mr Hal Dobbins, waste strategy coordinator at Lake Macquarie City Council.
"I think that's something we don't communicate practically enough, because people look at it, and say, we make compost out of it. That's great, that's a good thing, putting those nutrients back in the soil. But to me the bigger win is the greenhouse gas abatement."
Not only has reduction in organic waste in the council landfill avoided 368,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, it has seen processing contractor Remondis generate 90,000 tonnes of compost material from that organic waste.
The green kitchen caddy-liner bags, made of a starch-based biofilm, fully breakdown in the industrial composting process used by the council's contractor, Remondis, at its Awaba waste depot.
The bags conveniently fit into a kitchen "caddy" bin for easy handling so when full they can tied and dropped into every household's big 240-litre green bin.
"The green bags we supply are quite an important piece of that strategy, because households tell us by using those green bags, it's more pleasant to have food recovery in their kitchen," Mr Dobbins says.
"They are not getting the smells and the pests, it keeps the green bins cleaner, and that's why we've invested in rolling those bags out every year."
The contamination rate from green bin waste across Lake Macquarie is less than two per cent, Dobbins says.
Lake Macquarie council has weekly kerbside green bin pick-up. Red bins, for general waste, and yellow bins, for recycling materials, are picked up fortnightly.
As of now, the council has completed 70 per cent of the annual rollout of delivering rolls of compostable green bags to the 86,000 households in Lake Macquarie.
The green bags are also frequently used by animal owners to pick up dog droppings - Lake Macquarie has more than 90,000 dogs.
Additional bags are available free, and can be picked up from any of the council's 11 libraries, the admin centre at Speers Point, Landcare Hub at Booragul, the works depot at Boolaroo or the Awaba waste facility.
