New public place recycling bins in our City

The opportunity

There are currently 64 permanent public place recycling bins across our city, compared with over 1000 garbage bins. This makes it challenging for our community to recycle when outside the home. This means that some recyclable material ends up in garbage bins instead of being recycled.

For garbage bins paired with a recycling bin, recyclable material makes up nearly a quarter of the garbage bin, by weight. And for garbage bins without a neighbouring recycling bin, it’s over a third of the bin. Our public place recycling trial aims to address this problem by providing more public place recycling bins with clearer signage. 

Trialing new recycling bins in our City

The public place recycling trial started in June and will run until November 2024. So far, we have installed 14 temporary recycling wheelie bins next to existing garbage bins in busy areas.

Unlike the existing, permanent recycling bins, these bins include signage that states what items can and can’t go inside the bin. The yellow lid also makes them easily recognisable.

The trial aims to:

• recover more recyclable material by adding more public place recycling bins – and in the process, reduce the volume of garbage in adjacent bins
• reduce contamination of public place recycling bins – this currently sits at 25%, by weight.

Depending on the outcome of the trial, more public place recycling bins may be rolled out.

Avoiding contamination in recycling 

We’re conducting weekly audits to understand how these new bins are being used and to identify items that are being incorrectly recycled. We’ve noticed that there is still confusion when it comes to the following, these are being wrongly placed in our public place recycling bins:

1. Coffee cups and lids – paper and bioplastic cups and plastic lids cannot be recycled. Dispose of them in a public place garbage bin or your kerbside garbage bin.
2. Plastic bags – soft plastics cannot be recycled in a recycling bin. Dispose of these in a public place or kerbside garbage bin or drop them off at select supermarkets: Aldi in St Kilda currently accepts soft plastics. 
3. Food in containers – remove food from eligible plastic containers before placing them in the recycling bin.

For more info on what goes in recycling, visit Guide to recycling bins and services - City of Port Phillip. Together, we can keep our streets clean and prevent valuable materials from going to landfill.