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WALGA’s Waste Management Newsletter
Issue 20 November 2022

Onwards and Upwards for Wanneroo!

The City of Wanneroo’s WasteSorted Talking My Language Toolkit has been crowned Community Engagement Success of the Year at the 2022 Waste Innovation and Recycling Awards.

The Toolkit was developed to overcome the difficulties experienced by culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities in understanding waste services information due to language and literacy barriers. With greater than 40% of the City’s population born overseas and 20% of residents speaking a language other than English at home, the Toolkit has been a valuable asset in making waste information more accessible.

The annual national awards highlight excellence in a variety of categories that cover the whole spectrum of the waste industry. Well done to the Town of Cambridge and Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council who were nominated as finalists.

And hot off the press, the Toolkit has also taken out this year’s Excellence in Service Delivery Award at the LG Professionals WA Honour Awards.
For more information about the Toolkit, email the City of Wanneroo Waste Education Team.

Pictured (top image) from left to right: Daniel Simms, Amani Kowero, Emma Syme, Linda Aitken and Harminder Singh. Image Credit: City of Wanneroo.

Product Stewardship Champion of the Year

Rebecca Brown, WALGA Manager Waste and Environment, has been recognised by the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence as the 2022 Product Stewardship Champion.
The Product Stewardship Champion of the Year award recognises an Australian individual, or team, who has had a singular impact in driving product stewardship forward in Australia. In her role with WALGA, Rebecca has proactively elevated Local Government as an essential stakeholder, partner and provider in several product stewardship and Extended Producer Responsibility schemes.

An example of WALGA’s advocacy on product stewardship is the Container Deposit Scheme which has doubled the amount of containers being recycled in Western Australia since the Scheme commenced in 2020.

Local Government sees product stewardship as an opportunity for industry to take financial, or physical responsibility, for their products at end of life. WALGA’s Product Stewardship Principles outline the key components of an effective product stewardship scheme, including making schemes easy, convenient and accessible across WA.

More details about the Product Stewardship Excellence Awards, including other recognised achievements, can be viewed here.

Image Credit: Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence.

Still a Lot of Butts

The Keep Australia Beautiful Council report summarises the findings of the Australian Litter Measure litter surveys completed across the Perth metropolitan area in May 2022.
A total of 57 sites spread across 10 Local Government areas were surveyed during a two‑week period. The survey covered 104,726 square metres where a total of 18,245 items of litter were counted with a volume of 1,145 litres.

Cigarette butts were the highest litter item counted, totalling 4,010 or 22% of total items; volume wise they were ranked 35 and accounted for less than 1% total litter volume. Cigarette butts were highly concentrated in retail, main road and industrial sites, with 91% found in those three site types.

Of all litter items counted, almost 61% were made of plastic – including hard plastic, soft plastic and plastic fragments – which accounted for 32% of the total litter volume. Paper and card food packaging was the second largest contributor, at 22% of total volume.

Beverage container litter has decreased significantly, following the introduction of the Container Deposit Scheme (CDS). Beverage containers counted – both CDS eligible and non‑CDS eligible – totalled 151 or less than 1% of total items. Of these, 124 were classified as CDS eligible. Prior to the WA CDS commencing in October 2020, the 2019‑20 Western Australian National Litter Index recorded an average of 1,038 beverage containers or 12% of total items.

Read the full report here or find out more by visiting the Keep Australia Beautiful Council website.

Image Credit: AdobeStock 154055014.

Ready for National Recycling Week?

Look no further if you’re after some GREAT resources to kickstart your communities’ recycling and waste avoidance efforts.
National Recycling Week resources are available to download from the WasteSorted website or by clicking here. There is also a social media plan that can help Local Governments to maximise the use of these assets during each day from 7 to 13 November.

Planet Ark will be hosting an online webinar Don't Waste Your Education Efforts: What Works to Reduce Recycling Contamination which will feature insights from research conducted by BehaviourWorks Australia.

When: 11:30am to 12:15pm on Wednesday, 9November.
Where: Online. Register here.

Image Credit: Waste Authority.

Tidy Towns Finalists

The finalists for this year’s Tidy Towns Sustainable Communities Awards have been announced!
This year, regional and remote communities were able to submit entries in eight award categories, with one community being announced as the overall State Winner. Best of luck to the shires of Wyndham‑East Kimberley, Murray, East Pilbara, Irwin, and Narrogin, and City of Karratha.

The overall State Winner and category winners will be announced at a gala luncheon on Friday, 25November at Fraser’s Kings Park, West Perth.

Read more about the finalists here.

Image Credit: Keep Australia Beautiful Council.

Asbestos Awareness

National Asbestos Awareness Week (NAAW) will be taking place from 21 to 27 November.
In 2021, a record number of Local Governments nationwide participated in asking Australians to Think Twice About Asbestos by using campaign materials, promoting key messages and assets from the campaign resource pack on their social media channels and website.

Key points for the 2022 NAAW campaign:
  • An estimated 4,000 Australians die annually from asbestos related diseases, which is nearly four times the annual road toll
  • Encouraging home occupiers and tradespeople to ‘do things the right way’ and lawfully dispose of asbestos to prevent exposure to asbestos fibres and eliminate asbestos‑related disease
  • A focus on preventing the intentional illegal dumping of asbestos and the often‑unintentional improper disposal of asbestos waste in Local Government kerbside bins.
Local Governments are encouraged to participate in NAAW by promoting the campaign materials within their communities.
 
The Stakeholder Campaign Pack is available here. Email the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency Team for any assistance or further information about the campaign.

Image Credit: Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency.

Environment Ministers Meeting

The Environment Ministers Meeting (EMM) is an intergovernmental forum in which national environmental issues are progressed and a forum to discuss strategic issues and agree cross‑government actions to improve Australia’s environment.
At the Friday, 21 October 2022 meeting, ministers agreed to work with the private sector to design out waste and pollution, keep materials in use and foster markets to achieve a circular economy by 2030.

There will be a focus on:
  • Developing a regulatory product stewardship scheme for solar panels and household electronics
  • Developing nationally harmonised definitions to support the phase out of problematic single‑use plastics
  • Reforming regulation of packaging by 2025, to ensure that all packaging available in Australia is designed to be recovered, reused, recycled and reprocessed safely in line with circular economy principles
  • Adding end of life tyres to the Minister’s Priority List
  • Working with jurisdictions to phase out the use of harmful chemicals in food packaging.
Full details of the outcomes from the meeting are available here.

Image Credit: AdobeStock_261550588.

Consistent Communication
Collective Communiqué

The Consistent Communications Collective (CCC) is a Working Group of the Municipal Waste Advisory Council, WALGA’s delegated Committee responsible for waste management. The key objective of the Collective is to ensure that all those communicating with the community on waste management related matters are providing a consistent message.

At the Wednesday, 5 October 2022 meeting, the CCC agreed:
  • That toothpaste tubes are not recyclable through kerbside Recycling bins in Western Australia.
To find out more about the Collective, email Rebecca Brown, Manager Waste and Environment or call on (08) 9213 2063.

HHW Program

The Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Program was established to provide Western Australians with a safe, and free, disposal option for unwanted household products that contain chemicals or substances that can be harmful to people or the environment. Find out more here.
Image Credit: WALGA.
 

Bin Tagging Program

The Bin Tagging Program focuses on reducing contamination and increasing resource recovery from kerbside bin systems by using a combination of information provision, incentives and enforcement. Click here to find out how your Local Government can get involved.

WALGA COVID-19 Updates

Read the latest sector-relevant information as it relates to COVID-19. These ad-hoc communications are released as State Government announcements are made. Click here to access the archive. To register to receive these updates via email, click here.
Image Credit: WA Government.

Waste is the Word

 
Want to share your waste management successes, promote a new project, have a key question answered or collaborate with other Local Governments? We want to include your waste management issues in our next newsletter.
Submit your content to the WALGA Waste Team

Resources


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