Glass Recycling

The Victorian Government has mandated the removal of glass from the kerbside recycling stream by 2027.

The Victorian Government state-wide kerbside reforms and the 'Recycling Victoria: A new economy' policy mandates that in the future glass will no longer be able to go into kerbside recycling bins. This is because glass breakages contaminate other recyclable material.

In March 2020 the State Government released the Recycling Victoria Policy, which requires Councils to introduce measures that remove glass from kerbside recycling.

In October last year al 79 Victorian Councils were required to provide DELWP with a transition plan on how they would meet the requirements of the state's policy by 2024. A draft plan was submitted to DELWP that also served as a funding application to support the transition.

As a result we have introduced glass disposal points across all of Council's waste facilities. This approach removes the additional costs that would have had to be covered by ratepayers to purchase new kerbside bins for the collection of glass.

The reason for this approach is because the State Government is implementing a container deposit scheme in November 2023. Where the container deposit schemes exist in other states, they have been shown to direct a large portion of glass and plastics from the kerbside collection system.

The City of Ballarat successfully introduced a disposal point program for glass diversion in May 2020, which has diverted 70 per cent of glass from kerbside recycling to the disposal points.