Recycling Week: Hundreds of Hamiltonians recognised for bin efforts

More than 400 Hamiltonians were rewarded with "recycling champion" tags for clean and correct recyclables during Recycle Week. Photo / Hamilton City Council

Over 400 Hamiltonians were recognised by Hamilton City Council for fighting the landfill during Recycling Week.

The council’s Resource Recovery and Sustainability “recycling fairies” were searching for recycling champions last week, by lifting the lids on residents’ yellow recycling kerbside bins out for collection in Fairfield, Hamilton East, Glenview, St Andrews and Dinsdale.

The fairies then attached green “recycling champion” tags to more than 400 recycling bins that contained clean and correct recyclables of paper, cardboard, plastics, tins and cans.

Four lucky recycling champion households even received a family pass to Waterworld for their efforts.

Council’s Sustainable Resource Recovery Unit director Tania Hermann said the team were pleased to see so many people recycling right.

“The team really enjoyed the engagement with the residents and found all the conversations to be positive and engaging”, she said.

On the other side, Hermann noted the most common issue when it comes to recycling bins was dirty items.

She encourages residents to wash out all food containers, bottles, tins and cans before recycling them, because food waste left behind can contaminate other materials and make them difficult to recycle.

Herman also urged people to remove and discard lids from all recyclable bottles and containers.

“These two really simple actions can have a positive impact on the people who sort through the recyclables by hand at Hamilton’s recycling sorting centre.”

People wanting to learn more about recycling the right way could check out resources available on the Fight the Landfill website. There are how-to-booklets available on the website in various languages.

Upon request, council waste minimisation educator Belinda Goodwin would also hold workshops to teach community groups, schools and businesses how to recycle right and reduce waste to landfill.

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