Page 475 - Week 02 - Thursday, 11 February 2021
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arriving sooner than expected. Michael previously had to borrow a car and trailer to get bulky waste to the tip. With the fast-track of the rollout, Belconnen residents like Michael will be able to access the service from 1 April to make it easier to recycle and get rid of unwanted hard waste from the kerb. Residents in Molonglo, Hall, Woden, Weston, the inner north and the inner south will then have collections commencing from 1 July.
Some suburbs were not originally due to receive this service until 2024, and I look forward to our government delivering more services for them almost three years ahead of schedule, in line with our election commitment. As demonstrated in the budget this week, in 2021 we are getting on with the job and delivering better services for Canberrans.
MS ORR: Minister, what types of materials are Canberrans currently disposing of through the service?
MR STEEL: I thank Ms Orr for her supplementary and her interest in recycling. It has been about seven months since the first bulky waste collections took place in Canberra and we are now getting a much better picture of the type of bulky waste or hard rubbish that Canberrans are leaving out on their kerb, in Gungahlin and Tuggeranong in particular but also through the concession cardholder scheme, which has always been in place around Canberra.
Several hundred tonnes of material have been collected in Tuggeranong and Gungahlin, with 6,000 pieces of furniture collected, almost 6,000 items of scrap timber and metal, 2,000 appliances and 2,000 pieces of electrical equipment, along with thousands of garden tools, camping equipment and building materials.
This is a good opportunity to remind Canberrans that the items that can be collected include furniture, tools, timber, whitegoods, building materials, metal products, electrical equipment including those with batteries removed, blankets, linen, manchester, lighting, automotive parts—fuel and batteries removed, of course—camping and outdoor equipment, as well televisions and computers. We are looking forward to other Canberrans being able to benefit from the service and putting those out to be recycled.
MR PETTERSSON: Minister, what happens after these materials are collected?
MR STEEL: I thank Mr Pettersson for his supplementary. In addition to providing an easier way for Canberrans to dispose of unwanted materials, resource recovery is also an important objective of the service. We have set quite a high resource recovery target of 30 per cent for these items, meaning that we want at least 30 per cent of the collected materials to find a new home, rather than ending up in landfill. So far, the service is achieving a recovery rate of 38.8 per cent, which is a great result and exceeds rates achieved by many local councils around Australia.
Items collected are sorted, recovered and recycled, where possible, to maximise the diversion to landfill. That is also being achieved through new trucks, which sees those items separated on the truck. To do this the ACT government has also partnered with
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