Canning Council is helping residents to put the right thing in the right bin, with its eighth round of bin tagging commencing on Monday.
The eight-week program will be reduced to Mondays and Wednesdays only, in selected areas of East Cannington, Bentley, Wilson and Parkwood.
Each fortnight waste education officers will look inside kerbside bins, in the selected areas, and will provide feedback in the form of a tag, to help residents use their general waste and recycling bins correctly.
Tags will display a happy or sad face and detail more information about the use of the bins and what can be improved.
Mayor Patrick Hall said the bin tagging program is helping educate Canning residents on how to use their kerbside bins correctly.
“Working with the WA Local Government Association (WALGA), the program provides direct feedback to residents on how to use the general waste and recycling bins correctly,” he said.
“Taking the time to educate residents empowers them to recycle in the correct way, which helps the city send less waste to landfill and recycle more, reducing the processing costs associated with contaminated bins.
“At the beginning of the last round of bin tagging, 40 per cent of residents received happy tags on their recycling bin, by the end of the program 62 per cent of yellow lid bins receiving happy tags, which shows a great improvement in residents waste sorting behaviours.”
During the previous round of bin tagging, the most common mistakes found in the City’s recycling bins were soft plastics, which should be placed in the general waste bin.
About 42.2 per cent of households were found to be putting soft plastics such as chip bags, plastic produce bags and lolly wrappers in the recycling bin at the end of round seven.
One of the biggest improvements from round seven was not bagging recyclables, they should always be placed loose in the recycling bin.
Bins with bagged recyclable went from 18.5 per cent at the beginning of the round to 7.9 per cent at the end of the round.
Residents can make further improvements by ensuring that only rinsed containers without lids are placed in the recycling bin and that all long-life cartons are placed in the general waste bin.
