At the end of September we did some audits of bins in the trial area to find out how full they are and what’s in each type of bin.

Our waste auditors looked at the contents of 250 bins, from a mix of flats, apartments and houses.

This is what they found:

• Contamination in the two new collections is really low, with just 2% contamination in the glass bin and 2.4% contamination in the food and green waste bin. Contamination is defined as anything that shouldn’t be in that type of bin.
• We’ve nearly got glass totally out of the yellow-lidded recycling bin. Contamination in this bin by glass is only 3.6%
• But total contamination in the yellow-lidded recycling bin remains high at 19.9%.
• Glass (3.6%), recyclables in plastic bags (2.9%), plastic number 5, like plastic containers (2.3%) and cartons or TetraPaks (1.7%) the key offenders. These items should not be put in your yellow-lidded bin.
• We still haven’t got all of the food and green waste out of our landfill bins. These bins are still 28.6% food and green waste. While this is a great improvement on the 50% before, it still means there’s heaps of food and green waste that could be being composted – preventing tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from being released into the atmosphere.

These audits have given us hard data about what’s going right with what’s in each bin and what needs to improve.

We’ll use the results to help improve our education or communication activities.

If you need more information on how to use your bins, read more about:

• composting your food and green waste
• recycling your glass
• using your yellow-lidded recycling bin
• what the different numbers on plastic containers mean.

You can also contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions about your waste and recycling service.