Waste management is an essential service provided by Council, and critical to the health of the community and protecting the local environment. There are many challenges and opportunities in managing waste and finding value and markets for recovered resources from waste.

The transition to a circular economy, where we keep materials in use for longer through reuse, repair, and recycling, also presents potential economic, social, and environmental opportunities for the local community and businesses.

The strategy addresses these challenges and opportunities and guides how Council and the community can work together to reduce our waste footprint, to ensure a community-focused service into the future.

A circular economy is an economic model which involves circulating materials in the economy for as long as possible through repair, reuse and recycling. This contrasts with the linear model of 'take-make-dispose'.

The circular economy recognises that the amount of available resources is limited. It is based on 3 principles.

1. Design out waste and pollution. When a product is designed can the packaging, or other material used in production and sale, be reduced? e.g. the design of a reusable coffee keep cup negates the need for a disposable single use coffee cup.
2. Keep products and materials in use  - e.g. when making purchasing decisions consider if an old item can be repaired first, or can you buy it second hand?  
3. Regenerate natural systems   - e.g. returning valuable nutrients to the soil to support regeneration via the composting of food organics.

The NSW Government has released the Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041 and NSW Plastics Action Plan together they are the NSW 20 Year Waste Strategy.

The NSW strategy includes a range of ambitious targets and actions, including:

• mandatory collection of food and garden organics from all NSW households by 2030
• reduce total waste generated by 10% per person by 2030
• 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030
• overall litter reduction target of 60% by 2030
• triple the plastics recycling rate by 2030
• halve the amount of organic waste sent to landfill, and net zero emissions from organics to landfill, by 2030.

Our strategy considers these various targets and initiatives and provides ambitious but realistic targets for the Northern Beaches, under each direction.

Reuse is about passing on items to be used again by others or repurposing/upcycling items and products for extended use. This saves resources and energy by keeping materials in their same form for longer.

The next best option is recycling, where the waste is remanufactured into new products. Resources and energy are still required in recycling but generally less is needed than when making products from virgin materials.

The NSW Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041 includes a range of ambitious targets and actions, including mandating the separate collection of household food waste by 2030. Food waste makes up an average of almost 50% of the waste in our red bins.

This will be a significant system change for Council and the Northern Beaches community. This strategy sets out how Council will make the transition in a way which is customised to our community's strengths, needs and readiness.

FOGO stands for food organics and garden organics. Under a FOGO service, food scraps, lawn clippings and vegetation can be placed in the bright green lidded organics curb side collection bin - currently in the green vegetation bin.

FO stands for food organics. Under a FO service food scraps are collected separately from garden organics. This could mean a separate bin.

Council is comprehensively reviewing the feasibility of a range of options to recover food waste (as well as other materials) from the domestic red bin. We need to ensure that whatever we do has long term sustainable outcomes and makes products which can be returned to valuable use and avoid rushing into a solution which can’t be sustained.

As part of the actions from the strategy, we will commit to implementing a phased approach to food waste collection. Further information on this can be found in Direction 3 of the strategy.

Changes to residential bins depends on the type of service that is offered, which may also depend on whether the dwelling is multi-unit or single-unit.

A guide to costs for initiatives can be found in the strategy, under the 'Implementing the Strategy' section. This section also outlines the financial year in which the initiative is expected to be implemented.

Many of the initiatives will not lead to increases in waste charges. However, some key initiatives, like the introduction of food organics collections, will require an increase in the waste charge in order to achieve the environmental and climate change benefits. We intend to pilot these types of initiatives, where possible, to achieve the best outcome for the community.

There has been an exponential increase in the use of soft plastics in the past few years, but there are no large scale recyclers of soft plastics in Australia.

Many soft plastics are made of mixed materials, are contaminated post use by consumers and there are limited markets for the recycled plastics in Australia. This has led to stockpiling and landfilling of large volumes of soft plastics (as occurred with the recent collapse of the Redcycle soft plastics scheme).

'Soft plastics' is a category made up of many different types of plastic with different chemical make-up. This makes it very difficult to recycle them together due the different properties of each type of plastic - e.g. potato chip packets are very different from cling wrap and require different chemical processes to recycle them into useful material to make new products.

Council conducted some soft plastic collection events earlier in 2023, which demonstrated that the soft plastics collected were of poor quality and often were contaminated, and extremely costly to recycle with limited downstream markets. As a result, at this stage Council does not propose to run further collection events. However, we will continue to monitor the market for viable options. We also encourage the community to reduce the use of soft plastics where possible to avoid it ending in landfill.

The strategy outlines a number of initiatives to ensure the best recovery from the bulky goods service, including:

• customising our bulky goods collection service for high density areas
• identifying opportunities to reduce the volume and increase recycling of household items being disposed of in Council’s kerbside bulky goods collection.
• providing separate collections of targeted recyclable bulky goods to divert more waste from landfill
• creating a more flexible bulky goods service.

These may lead to changes in the way we collect your bulky goods in certain circumstances.

To ensure a sustainable domestic waste service which meets community's expectations, we need to deliver a convenient service, resilient to stresses, supports waste reduction, sustainable recycling, and the transition to a circular economy. This will include things like a food waste collection and more accessible collections for other wastes.

Implementation of these initiatives will mean positive changes to waste services. We will ensure it supports and educates the community throughout these changes.

See our Rubbish and recycling bin guide.

There are many small things we can do in our daily lives that can make a positive impact. Here's a few ideas.

• Remember your reusable keep cup and shopping bags to help phase out unnecessary plastics.
• Separate your recycling at home and correctly use Council’s domestic waste and recycling service.
• Try to reduce food waste buy planning your meals and shopping to a list and use up your leftovers. The EPA 'Love Food Hate Waste' program have lots of useful tips and resources to help you reduce food waste.
• Compost your food scraps and use the nutrient rich fertiliser to grow some veggies at home or join a local community garden.
• Repair and mend items, if possible, rather than replacing with new.
• Rehome unwanted household item by giving them away to friends or family or online via local Freebie sites. Or sell them online or at one of Council’s second-hand events like the Avalon Car Boot Sale.
• Look at Council’s A-Z Guide to reuse, recycle and dispose to work out how to recycle more from your home.
• Use our Reuse/Recycling map to see where you can take items locally for free.
• Attend one of Council’s waste reduction events. https://www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/services/ru...