Wyndham council is calling on residents to repurpose recyclable waste this National Recycling Week, which runs until Friday, November 15.
The council’s director of city design and liveability, Ludo Campbell-Reid, said this year’s Recycling Week theme was “Recovery – A future beyond the bin”.
“The challenge this year is to look at what we can salvage from landfill and recycling and use in our homes,” Mr Campbell-Reid said.
“This could be as simple as reusing an ice-cream tub as a water basin to clean the windows, saving your milk cartons to grow seedlings and reusing glass jars for storage.
“This means the items are not taking up space in landfill, we reduce the energy used in the recycling process or in the creation of new materials, and we save money on buying new things.”
Mr Campbell-Reid said that while most Wyndham residents have good knowledge of what items can be recycled, soft plastics were often placed in household recycling bins.
“Examples of soft plastics are plastic bags, the wrapping from rice, pasta and biscuits, and the film on the top of meat containers,” he said.
“We find some residents have their recycling in perfect order but put them in bags – soft plastic – which cannot be put in the recycling bin.”
To increase young peoples’ awareness of recycling, the council is inviting families to take part in its National Recycling Week Family Sculpture competition, which will be open until Friday, December 4.
“The competition requires participants to create a sculpture out of household material that was destined for landfill or the recycling bin,” Mr Campbell-Reid said.
Details: wyndham.vic.gov.au/sculpturecompetition
