By Jessica Micallef
Macedon Ranges residents will have an extra bin for their waste from next year.
Councillors last Wednesday gave the green light to introduce a mandatory separate glass collection service starting in February.
It is estimated it would cost the council more than $1 million to implement the extra bins across the area.
About 20,000 Macedon Ranges households will be provided with a 140-litre kerbside bin with a purple lid for glass. The glass bin will be collected every four weeks.
The glass will be processed by recycling centre the Alex Fraser Group and reused in construction materials.
The service will begin in conjunction with a weekly food organics garden organics (FOGO) service that will allow residents to place food and vegetable waste into their garden bins.
The first glass-only public recycling bins were installed earlier this month in the Macedon Ranges. The 240-litre bins were implemented in Darraweit Guim, Gisborne, Kyneton, Lancefield, Malmsbury, Riddells Creek, Romsey, Tylden, Woodend and Macedon.
Macedon Ranges council said it looked at public safety, distance to nearest transfer station, ease of access for the community and access for collection trucks when deciding where the glass bins would be installed.
Following the collapse of recycling group SKM on July 25, the council’s kerbside recycling was stored at Four Season’s Waste facility in Kyneton. However the facility only had the capacity to store about 14 days of material and as of August 10 all recycling has been directed to landfill.
About 622 Lancefield residents are currently taking part in a glass recycling trial.
Those residents can continue to use their glass-only bins provided as part of the trial which will end in January. The bins are collected monthly.
According to a council report, glass from recycling bins had “reduced significantly” from 31 per cent to about 5 per cent by the third collection in the trial.
Macedon Ranges mayor Janet Pearce said she was delighted with the community’s effort to remove glass from recycling bins.
The council will explore options to reuse glass locally as part of a feasibility study. The results will be considered by the council in April.
The council will contact residents over the coming weeks to provide more detail about the bins.
