Glass Collection Points
For Merri-Bek City Council
How Reground applied best practice shared waste modelling, monitoring and evaluation to establish practical and accessible glass recycling collection points for Merri-bek residents.
Following the Victorian Government’s mandate of statewide kerbside reform - aimed at providing more and better recycling services for all Victorians - local councils have been quickly moving to standardise a new four-bin system for waste and recycling.
By expanding the stream separation of waste and recycling into four streams, contamination will be reduced, recycling rates will increase and the quality of recycled materials recovered for reuse will also increase.
Merri-bek City Council engaged Reground to support all residents to be able to access Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) and Glass recycling services (in addition to their existing General Waste and Mixed Recycling.) In some cases, it was determined that the introduction of private bins for these new streams was not practicable for all residences; instead, shared collection points could be installed giving all residents convenient access to the new recycling streams.
Reground determined and installed 29 community glass collection points to service shared-waste areas and then undertook 10 weeks of monitoring and evaluation to ensure residents’ needs were being met.
29 community collection points installed
Serving over 1600 households, primarily apartments, townhouses and units
10 weeks of monitoring and evaluation
Contamination below 10%
Shared waste spaces - especially publicly accessible ones - are notoriously tricky, and contamination is often high. Adding to that the challenge of rolling out a new recycling stream, comprising often heavy items (a significant barrier when it comes to utilisation of communal drop-off points) meant that the selection and careful establishment of appropriate collection points was key to success of this project. This required a deep understanding of resident waste behaviour along with waste industry processes - to ensure pickups could be completed successfully.
The Reground team’s waste education and advocacy expertise was also essential to the success of the project, ensuring accurate and meaningful signage was installed and correct use of the collection points communication with all residents.
Just under 200 residents served by the shared collection points were surveyed by council, over 75% of whom were satisfied with the location and amenity of their local collection point.
Overall contamination was low, averaging at 10% and trending downwards.
Moreover, monitoring and evaluation of bin usage and contamination allowed for precise, timely recommendations to council that are expected to reduce contamination down to less than 5% in future.
“Reground offered a turn-key solution to an issue that many councils will experience throughout the glass roll out – how to meaningfully service dense areas of the municipality.
From inception, trial implementation, community comms, site selection and operational delivery – the Reground Team met each deliverable with the perfect mix of professionalism and flexibility.”