Recycling
The best way to preserve natural resources, reduce air pollution, save energy and cut greenhouse gasses is to initially avoid creating waste. The choices we make not just in the home, but at the shops and in the office make a collective impact on the amount of waste we generate and the future of our planet.
Household Recycling
Recycling is an excellent way to help:
- Reduce the volume of waste sent to landfill,
- Reduce the amount of raw materials extracted from the environment, saving water, energy, and greenhouse gases
- Reduce the costs associated with waste disposal and the manufacture of new products
Recycling is collected from your yellow lidded bin on a fortnightly basis. The bins are collected by J.J Richards and Sons P/L contractors, and should be placed out for collection along with your normal 140 or 240 Litre garbage bin.
Items which can be placed in your recycling bin
Recycling Hints
- Do not place recyclables in plastic bags. Use a tub or basket to transport recyclables from your kitchen to your recycling bin to ensure your recycling efforts are not wasted;
- Packaging plastics don’t need to have the recycling symbol on the bottom to be recycled eg. cherry tomato packages and black meat trays. Virtually any plastic (not from the garage) can be recycled (except for plastic bags);
- You don’t have to wash out bottles or cans (eg. dog food cans), or remove labels;
- You don’t need to remove the metal teeth from the cling wrap boxes or the plastic insert on tissue boxes;
- Aluminium foil can be recycled as long as you remove any food from it and then squash into a ball.
Items which cannot be put in your recycling bin
- Other household items including clothes and textiles,
- Household chemicals, hazardous waste, batteries
- Polystyrene regardless of whether the packaging displays a recycling symbol
- Light globes or fluorescent tubes
Hawkesbury City Council residents currently send between 40% - 50% of food and garden organics waste to landfill. Separate your organic waste and food scraps and start a compost bin or worm farm today.
Handy Hints
Recycling Collection Information
The Hawkesbury City Council area is divided into 2 collection areas, divided by the Hawkesbury River.
- Area 1 is South/East of the Hawkesbury River, and includes; Windsor, South Windsor, Richmond, McGraths Hill, Bligh Park, Pitt Town, Cattai:
- Area 2 is North/West of the Hawkesbury River, and includes; North Richmond, Bilpin, Howes Creek, St Albans and all in between
On your recycling week, simply put the bin out at the same time as your garbage bin. If you are unsure when to place your bins out for collection look up your street in the Garbage Service Directory.
If you have an evening garbage service, your recycling bin will be emptied after 5am on the next day. If you have a morning garbage collection, your recycling bin will be emptied after 5am on the same day.
Please place your bins facing the kerb and at least one metre apart. Do not place near parked cars or low hanging trees.
Where Does My Recycling Go?
Kerbside recyclables collected from your yellow recycling bin are picked up by J.J. Richards, who transports the materials to the VISY Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at Smithfield, which is Visy’s largest MRF.
It can process up to 50 tonnes of recyclable material like paper, cardboard, glass, aluminium, steel and plastic every hour; receiving approximately 200 million tonnes of material per annum. VISY closes the loop on paper and cardboard by feeding material directly into the Smithfield Paper Mill, Visy's paper and cardboard manufacturing facility.
Materials are then sorted by hand to remove the non recyclables (these are called contamination) which are sent to landfill. This is one reason why it’s important not to place broken glass, syringes or other contaminants into the recycling bin.
- Visy Recycling Process 1.5 MB
