Waste tips

Tips for householders

Reuse paper
Reuse sheets of paper that have been used on one side for:

• drawing paper for young children;
• rough drafts of stories, letters, etc;
• student study;
• shopping lists;
• telephone messages;
• games.
• keep a box beside your desk at home, at school or at work for paper to be reused.  Recycle all paper that can’t be reused;

Steps to reduce paper use

• place a NO ADVERTISING MATERIAL notice on your mailbox;
• if you have a home computer, reduce the use of paper by proof reading your work from the screen before printing a hard copy;

Reuse plastic

• Refuse plastic bags for single purchases.
• Reuse small plastic bags for small purchases.
• Keep a few used plastic shopping bags or cardboard boxes in the car for shopping on the way home from work or an outing.Keep a spare plastic shopping bag (rolled up and secured with a rubber band) in your handbag or wallet – for those times when you thought you wouldn’t need a bag, but did.

Avoid using plastic by:

• say no to plastic bags and take a backpack or calico bags when you go shopping
• if you shop at a small supermarket or in a market, ask the shop keeper to pack your goods directly into your own bag, box or basket, without using plastic bags. Or offer to pack it yourself

Recycling

• Recycle empty glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, aluminium cans, and steel cans.
• If you are on an outing or a holiday where there is no recycling bin, take your bottles and cans home for recycling.
• Store left-over foods in the refrigerator in bowls covered with a saucer or a shower cap, rather than plastic wrap.
• Give old clothes, toys, furniture and appliances to charity.

Reuse your food scraps

• Feed your scraps to your chooks, dogs or guinea pigs.
• Compost fruit and vegetable scraps, leaves, grass clippings and soft stemmed plants. 
• If you don’t have a compost bin yet, you can dig fruit and veggie scraps directly into the garden. Compost bins can be purchased from Council.
• Use a four litre ice cream bucket to store fruit and veggie scraps from the kitchen.  Empty daily into the compost bin.
• Worm farms can convert your food, vegetable scraps, crushed eggshells, tea bags, coffee grounds, vacuum cleaner dust, hair etc., into liquid fertiliser for your plants. Worm farms can be purchased from Council.
• For family meals, use cloth serviettes, instead of disposable ones. Otherwise you can tear up used serviettes and towelling and put these in your compost or worm farm.

General Waste

• Save your corks from wine and champagne bottles. Give them to the Illawarra Cancer Carers Inc at Wollongong Hospital.
• Use a ball point pen that takes refills, or a fountain pen with a refillable cartridge.
• Bake potatoes in the oven without foil.  Prick before baking.
• TYOM – Take Your Own Mug – to places where tea/coffee is served in disposable cups (school functions, theatre nights, conferences, work etc.).
• Use old stockings to tie up tomato plants.
• Reuse orange bags to store and dry onions from your vegetable garden.
• Repair clothing, appliances and toys, rather than buy new ones.
• Have a garage sale instead of dumping items at the tip.
• If you are renovating, ask your trades person to resell or reuse items.

Reduce Reuse Recycle
We encourage you to avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle whenever and wherever you can. To save precious resources and create a cleaner environment the amount of household waste needs to be reduced. To help achieve this goal, our domestic waste collection service features:

• a red topped garbage bin, for weekly collection which comes in a choice of three sizes (80,120 & 240 litre);
• a green waste bin for fortnightly collection of green waste (e.g. garden & lawn clippings);
• fortnightly collection of the yellow topped recycling bin;
• annual household cleanup service.