Trash talk: The problem with plastic bags

Ipswich City Council is urging residents to stop putting plastic bags in their recycling bins.

Works, Parks and Sport Committee Acting Chairman Councillor David Morrison said plastic bags and other soft plastics like biscuit packets, confectionery bags, bread bags, cereal box liners and frozen vegetable packets caused major problems in terms of recycling.

“If you can scrunch up the plastic easily in your hand, it does not belong in the yellow lid bin,” he said.

Cr Morrison said those items could be recycled through the REDcycle program, which worked closely with all Ipswich Coles and Woolies stores, providing deposit bins for specific soft plastic items and bags.

“There has been a long-held perception that because these bags are ‘plastic’ they can be thrown in the yellow lid bin. But that is a complete furphy and seriously impacts on our contamination rates,” he said.

Cr Morrison said some residents also thought they were doing the right thing by bagging up recyclables in plastic bags before putting them in the yellow lid bin.

But that so-called ‘clean’ practice has been causing contamination in recycling for years.

Even if there is clean recyclable material inside the plastic bags, the load is considered to be contaminated.

“So you have this situation where recyclable items go straight to landfill because they have been bagged and it is not obvious what was inside. All the good work by residents quite literally goes to waste,” Cr Morrison said.

Cr Morrison said as part of council’s new recycling strategy – with a simple, definitive list of just four categories for the yellow lid bin – residents could make it even easier for everyone.

“No soft plastic bags should be used to collect and dispose recycling in the household. That includes compostable or biodegradable bags,” he said.

“You don’t need to line the bin, either in the house or the yellow lid bin. We have asked residents to give recyclable items tainted with food a rinse out before putting them in the recycling bin. That will keep the bin relatively clean or less smelly.”

Cr Morrison said the State Government’s move to ban single use plastic bags would help the problem, as those grey bags were often used by residents to line kitchen rubbish bins, either for recycling or food waste.

“The new 12-month recycling contract signed by council means we must get contamination rates down from the current 50 per cent to 15 per cent or lower,” he said.

“We all need to work together and scrapping the plastic bag is one simple way to help.”

In a bid to cut contamination rates by more than half, council has come up with a simple, definitive list of just four categories for the yellow lid bin as part of the fortnightly kerbside collection service. They are:

1. Paper: Newspapers, magazines, junk mail, office paper

2. Cardboard: Boxes (including empty pizza boxes)

3. Aluminium: Cans and tins

4. Plastic containers: Bottles (milk, soft drink, and shampoo and other toiletry containers), yoghurt and ice cream containers.