Cleaning up recycling habits
Published on 12 June 2023
The Shire of Broome is endeavouring to care for our iconic environment by ensuring all items that can be reused and recycled are separated and used again to prevent them from going to landfill.
Recycling begins with your kerbside bin, with the contents collected and taken to the Cleanaway recycling facility right here in Broome, whose staff process tonnes of cardboard, plastic, aluminium, and glass by hand, which would have otherwise gone to landfill.
The recyclable material is then baled and sent to Perth by road for recycling. The residual waste is sent to landfill and the glass is stockpiled at the Resource Recovery Area at the landfill for processing and reuse.
Unfortunately, too many bin loads, and sometimes truckloads of recycling, end up in landfill as they are unable to be processed due to the contents being contaminated by non-recyclable and putrescible items.
Some of these can be removed by hand, but others such as rotting meat, fish guts, dog faeces and soiled nappies make sorting untenable.
Then there are items that don’t belong in the recycling bin but end up there due to confusion.
✔ Items that can be recycled through the kerbside bin service are:
- Cardboard and paper
- Glass bottles and jars
- Aluminium tins and cans
- All type 1 and 2 plastics. Check the recycle symbol on the bottoms of the containers. The plastics are usually rigid.
❌ Do not recycle:
- Shredded paper - and please put it in a rubbish bag.
- Plastic bags, cling wrap, chip packets, bubble wrap and any other "scrunchy" plastic packaging – and don’t put recycling in bin liners.
- Foam and polystyrene.
- Drinking glassware (glass cups, wine glasses etc), crockery or Pyrex, light globes, window glass and mirrors.
- Containers made only partially from recyclable material.
- Videos, cassette tapes, CDs printer cartridges.
- Batteries and printer cartridges - the Shire Admin Building front desk, and Broome Public Library has tubs in which to dispose of printer cartridges, and small lithium and alkaline batteries.
Broome Shire President Desiree Male said many people want to do the right thing with recycling but understood there was confusion when it came to different packaging and materials and whether they can be repurposed.
“As a rule, apart from paper, if it isn’t something that has been used as packaging it probably can’t be recycled.”
“And consider the people who sort the recycling. It can’t be an easy job, especially in the heat, so don’t put any smelly items in a recycling bin and, where possible, rinse out tins and bottles and other food containers.”