The city has begun rolling out 75,000 new green organic bins to Gold Coast homes, in a bid to reduce the amount of organic waste ending up in landfill.
Properties that will receive the new bin include free-standing houses on lots between 250m2 and 5000m2 that do not already have one of the 55,000 bins already in use.
Green organics in landfill creates a 50% methane gas which is damaging to the environment.
Mayor Tom Tate delivered the first of the new bins to Miami today ahead of the city-wide rollout.
“These new bins will not only keep the equivalent of about 59 Olympic swimming pools, or 22,000 tonnes, of green organics out of landfill, which produces damaging greenhouse gases, they will also save ratepayers about $13 million over five years in State Government Waste Disposal Levy costs,” Mayor Tate says.
“The bins will save about $2 million in the first year alone.”
The waste disposal levy is a weight-based charge the state government imposes on councils across Queensland for waste sent to landfills.
The new bins will be delivered between July and September and will become part of each homes’ standard suite of bins and will be emptied every fortnight on the opposite week of the yellow-lid recycling bins.
They’re to be used for garden clippings, cut palm fronds, weeds, prunings, leaves and small branches.
The delivery will be the largest rollout of green organics bins in southeast Queensland so far.
The garden clippings from the bins will be taken to a specialist facility to be turned into compost and mulch which can be used in soil regeneration.
