Rethink waste

Waste is generated through our day to day lives including shopping, building and renovating, landscaping and yard maintenance, manufacturing, repairing and general consumption.

Choosing to reduce, reuse and recycle more household items requires us to think beyond the recycling bin and avoid disposing unwanted materials in general waste bins.

Council is committed to implement new initiatives and support the community to rethink waste. View Council's Waste management plans including Waste reduction and recycling, Waste education and community engagement, and Litter and illegal dumping.

More ways to rethink waste

  • Are you using recycling and general waste bins correctly? Check what you can put in bins to avoid safety and contamination issues. 
  • Donate unwanted items to charity or self-haul salvageable items are taken to Council’s treasure markets.
  • Try our rethink waste recycling quiz and find out if you need to rethink how you recycle.
  • Container refund scheme: Containers for change in partnership with the beverage industry provide a refundable deposit on single use drink containers to encourage the community to recycle rather than litter.
  • Look for secondhand instead of buying brand new. Calculate the Co2 emissions and energy you save by choosing to reuse with the Charitable reuse calculator. Enter your postcode and items donated or acquired pre-loved. 
  • Pick up a load of free mulch for your garden after you drop off a load of vegetation at Council’s waste facilities.
  • Kick start your garden with a new compost or worm farm at home to recycle your organic scraps. Checkout Council’s useful online resources to find the compost method to suit your lifestyle.
  • Find where to recycle items not accepted in your wheelie bins including soft plastics, batteries and printer cartridges.
  • Get on top of food waste by planning your meals and only buying what you need.
  • Reuse those takeaway containers before recycling them and repurpose glass jars, they make great containers or reusable coffee cups.
  • Familiarise yourself with the current waste and consumption issues and view short videos from The Story of stuff.
  • Want to recycle more? Terracycle provides free recycling programs for specific items.

Waste facts

  • The Queensland Government's single use plastic ban started on September 1, 2021. 
  • For every Australian, 2.7 tonnes of waste is generated every year.
  • Weekly general waste kerbside services collected 1.42 million tonnes of domestic waste from over 2 million households.
  • Approximately 300 million tonnes of plastic waste is produced every year which is almost equivalent to the weight of the entire human population.
  • Half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once and then thrown away. Less than one fifth of all plastic is recycled globally.
  • Australians are currently disposing of 6,000 kilograms of fashion and textile waste every 10 minutes.

Recycling and Resource recovery facts

  • Queensland councils diverted nearly 2.8 million tonnes of waste from disposal, including over 1.4 million tonnes of headline wastes, such as paper and packaging, and green wastes, and over 1.3 million tonnes of other waste including biosolids, batteries and clean earthen material.
  • 16,900 tonnes of waste was diverted from landfill through the operation of ‘tip shops’ such as Council's treasure markets.

Of the total materials recovered in 2020-21 from recycling bins and other commercial and industry operations:

  • 79.5 percent were processed in Queensland
  • 8.1 percent of diverted materials were sent interstate for further processing
  • 12.5 percent of diverted materials were sent overseas for further processing.