Get to know what to put in what bin. Correctly sorting waste helps to reduce what goes to landfill, increases recycling rates and creates a cleaner compost.
Find out what to put in each bin below:
FOGO Bin
Collected weekly
What can go into the lime green-lidded Food Organics, Garden Organics (FOGO) bin
✔ FOGO - all food organics (including bones and meat), garden organics, grass clippings, small prunings, shredded paper and even your food soiled cardboard and paper.
✔ TOP TIP - if it didn't live or grow, it isn't FOGO!
Maximum weight limit 70kg.
Your FOGO bin is collected weekly. Contents are processed at the Regional Resource Recovery Centre (RRRC) and turned into high quality compost.
What does NOT go into the FOGO bin
The following items will contaminate your FOGO bin and should NOT be placed in it:
✘ General rubbish
✘ Nappies and hygiene products
✘ Plastic bags (only the supplied compostable liners or newspaper to wrap food scraps are to be used)
✘ Construction, demolition and building materials (no bricks, sand, soil, concrete, rocks or asbestos)
✘ Glass or ceramics (place glass into your yellow-lidded recycling bin)
✘ Hazardous waste, including petrol, gas cylinders, paints, motor oils, garden chemicals and poisons, pool chemicals, cleaners, acids, bleaches and ammonia, medicines and flammable liquids
✘ Medical wastes or needles
Recycling Bin
Collected Fortnightly
What can go into the yellow-lidded recycling bin
✔ Paper (not shredded)
✔ Cardboard including pizza boxes (clean) and waxed cartons
✔ Glass including broken glass
✔ Aluminium wrap (clean, and scrunched into a ball)
✔ Plastic containers and bottles
✔ Cans (aluminium and steel)
All items should be empty, rinsed, dry with lids removed and placed loose in the bin.
Maximum weight limit 70kg.
What does NOT go into the recycling bin
✘ Building waste
✘ Hazardous waste including batteries and paint
✘ Food or garden waste
✘ Nappies
✘ Soft or scrunchable plastics
✘ Aerosols
✘ Meat trays
✘ Polystyrene
General Waste Bin
Collected fortnightly
What can go into the red-lidded general waste bin
✔ General rubbish items
✔ Nappies and hygiene products
✔ Polystyrene and soft plastics
✔ Ropes, straps and hoses
Maximum weight limit 70kg.
What does NOT go into the general waste bin
✘ Organic or recyclable material
✘ Hazardous items
Visit www.recycleright.wa.gov.au for a full list and A-Z of what goes in what bin.
Recycling Mythbusters
Learn about the myths from a City of Melville perspective, plus how to use the FOGO system to increase recycling and reduce contamination.
1. Putting my recycling in a plastic bag is fine. It will still get recycled. No, it won’t. Bags could contain all sorts of nasties from general rubbish to dirty nappies, or worse!. With up to 60 tonnes an hour of recycling to go through, staff do not have time to open each bag. Anything in a bag goes straight to landfill.
Any non foil lined beverage carton is fine to go in the recycling – just make sure you take the lid off first. Also 2020 will see the introduction of the 10c container refund in WA. A trial run at Kidchella 2019 brought in 2,459 containers in just 4 hours. Watch out for a Cash For Cans collection point near you next year.
We’re lucky here in WA, all our glass gets crushed and used for road base. That means that pretty much any type of glass can go in your recycling bin. Avoid those with film on such as mirror glass or toughened such as Pyrex. All the rest can go loose into your yellow lidded recycling bin.
WA is doing a great job with it’s recycling. Many of the stories about wasted recycling relate to poor practice in other states, but not us. Each year 1,043,588 recycling bins are emptied in the City of Melville and our recycling is sorted at the Canning Vale Resource Recovery and Recycling Centre. Here things that should not be in the recycling bin, such as plastic bags, polystyrene, take away cups and straws, organics and food contaminated paper, are removed. These contaminants do go to landfill. The rest is sent off to become new materials.
Food and garden organics do break down in landfill but they produce greenhouse gasses (especially methane) and leachate – an acidic liquid that can contaminate ground water. Organics in landfill are lost to the composting system – what a waste. Since the FOGO roll out City of Melville has collected 4198.37T of organics and sent them off for composting.
Plastic bags, and any other soft plastic wrappers or bags, foul up the recycling system. They get caught up in the machinery and stop it from working or they go flat and behave like paper, poisoning the paper stream. It’s the red lidded general rubbish bin for them or take them back to the RedCycle drop offs found at Woolworths or Coles.
Single use plastics cannot be recycled via your recycling bin. They are too small or they shatter and contaminate the other recycling streams. They often do not follow the ‘made of one material’ rule for recyclables. Same goes for polystyrene cups and trays.
City of Melville’s caddy liners are compostable but they should never go in the yellow lidded bin. They are designed for the lime green lidded FOGO bin only. Biodegradable or compostable materials.get caught up with the recyclable plastics and contaminate them.
Recycling near you!
There are some items that cannot go in any of your kerbside bins. Things like fluorescent lights, household batteries, printer cartridges and mobile phones contain a mix of hazardous and valuable materials. You can now recycle these at a location near you with the City Of Melville’s new recycling stations. Check out the new Recycling Stations at Blue Gum Community Centre, Willagee Community Centre and AH Bracks Library + Creative Space.
Items accepted include:
🔋 Household batteries
🖨️ Ink cartridges
📱 Old mobile phones and chargers
💡 Household light globes and fluoro tubes
You can find these stations in the foyers of each of these buildings. Happy recycling!
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