Resource Recovery and Residual Waste Strategy

The Strategy has now been adopted.

This strategy is on track to be endorsed by Council at the ordinary June 14th meeting. Once endorsed, this will be transitioned to a strategy available on the Lismore City Council website.

June 2021 Update

Thank you for your feedback so far on Council's recycling and waste management services. Since the last update in March, the outcomes of the waste focus group workshops in early March were presented to Council on 20 April, with the key findings being:

• The vast majority of respondents reduce, reuse and recycle at least sometimes (for example, take reusable bags with them to the shops, donate unwanted items to charity stores or sell online, reuse jars or containers before recycling them)
• 50% of respondents are incorrectly disposing of items in their yellow-lidded recycling bin
• 37% of respondents do one or more sub-optimal recycling practices (for example, putting dirty recyclables in the red-lidded landfill bin rather than washing them and putting them in the yellow-lidded recycling bin, putting items they’re unsure of in the recycling bin (eg polystyrene, plastic bags)
• Preferred methods of messaging about waste management are through Local Matters, stickers on wheelie bins and the #RecycleRight fridge magnet
• Other issues that had been raised in the online survey were discussed at length in the workshops, including scepticism about what actually happens to their recycling and who is responsible for what parts of waste management, methods of reducing waste to landfill (included making better purchase decisions such as buying products with less packaging where the option is available), and targeted waste education to adults at home as well as school-age children

Over April, Council staff also consulted with our business community by running an online survey as well as targeting a range of business types with particular waste management needs. While we only received 20 responses, they provided a useful snapshot of what’s going on for some businesses and provided opportunities for following up where businesses have requested it. At the same, we have also been talking with our waste operations staff at the Lismore Recycling & Recovery Centre about what we do well, the challenges they face and any opportunities or potential solutions they could put forward.

Last week, the NSW Government released its new 20-year Waste & Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041 (Stage 1: 2021-2027) and associated NSW Plastics Action Plan (for example, to reduce plastic waste generation) which pulled apart in detail as to how to incorporate these reforms and targets into Council’s own waste strategy.

Next Steps

The timeline for finalising the strategy document has been extended until March 2022.

We plan to present the draft Lismore Waste and Recycling strategy to Council in December 2021 before placing it on public exhibition for further feedback. We will provide an update closer to this time about how you can review the draft strategy. But in the meantime, there is plenty to action with the feedback Council has received so far for Council’s waste team, particularly around waste education and campaigns to reduce contamination in our kerbside bins – watch this space!

Thank you for your feedback so far on Council's recycling and waste management services. We received 326 responses to our community wide survey over November & December. Some of the findings include:

• Most respondents were from urban areas (Goonellabah, Lismore) but some also from villages (Nimbin & Dunoon) with a kerbside collection service, with residents from rural areas having different practices and challenges with their waste management.
• Most respondents make the effort to avoid waste, reuse, compost and recycle, however the main deterrents to recycling were confusion about what can and cannot be recycled, not having a kerbside collection and limited access to drop-off/recycling centres and a lack of confidence in the recycling industry that recyclable content is in fact recycled.
• Most respondents preferred Council to continue the current level of waste and recycling services and didn’t want to pay more for services
• The top 5 initiatives people would like to see in a new waste strategy were:
  1. Supporting circular economy projects, e.g. reusing products and packaging.
  2. Investigating other landfill diversion technologies
  3. Assisting local businesses and building partnerships to develop and implement recycling programs and industries.
  4. Upgrading and expanding the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).
  5. Targeted community education programs.

Following on from the survey, over 50 people participated in two focus group workshops in early March and explored in more detail the current situation as well as the positives and negatives of various directions for the future.

Next Steps

We will be presenting the outcomes from the focus group workshops to Council at a briefing at 6:00pm on Tuesday 20 April 2021.

The timeline for the development of the strategy has been delayed until later in the year. This is due to the need for more consultation with our business community and the release of NSW Government’s draft 20-year Waste Strategy which is expected to be available by May 2021.

We plan to present the draft Lismore Waste and Recycling strategy to Council in October 2021 before placing it on public exhibition for further feedback. We will provide an update closer to this time about how you can review the draft strategy.

Council is developing a new Lismore Waste & Recycling Strategy to guide long-term solutions for resource recovery, recycling and waste management.

Waste management is a key service provided by Council and a major component of Council's annual budget. It is important that we have a strategy for the delivery of these services that meets the expectations of our community in relation to cost, service delivery and a vision for recycling and waste management.

The first step to creating an effective strategy is to listen to our community. We want to hear your thoughts and suggestions to help us shape the future of waste and recycling in our region.

We have prepared a Discussion Paper that provides important background on key waste and recycling issues and an Information Pack that outlines Council's role in delivering waste and recycling services.

Please read the Discussion Paper and Information Pack and then complete the online Waste Survey below. It is very important that you read both documents first as this provides essential information and insights that will help inform your decision-making.

The waste survey is about community education and our strategic direction going forward. A focus group will be convened in early 2021 to delve more deeply into specific services and costs, and what Council should deliver into the future.

The waste survey is open until 5pm on Wednesday, 9 December 2020.

Stage 1: 4 November to 9 December 2020

• Read the Discussion Paper, Information Pack and complete the online waste survey.
• Attend an information kiosk to speak face-to-face with staff about the future of waste and recycling.

Information kiosks will be held on the following dates:

• Thursday, 12 November: Lismore Shopping Square, 9am to 12pm
• Sunday, 15 November: Lismore Car Boot Market, 9am to 2pm
• Sunday, 22 November: Nimbin Community Market, 8am to 2pm

Stage 2: February 2021

We will convene a focus group to examine the following:

• Services – what services are important to residents and businesses? What are the community’s service level expectations?
• Cost – is the community willing to pay additional costs for the services it wants?