My Rates Are Your Rates By Cr Alison Jones

Imagine how much council would save if we didn’t fill our landfill site at Hogans Pocket as fast as we are right now.  The State government are charging council more and more for us to deal with waste and that in itself is another cost to council. At the end of the day, that cost is to ratepayers. If you want to take some control, then we need to do better with our waste.  We only have waste because we make waste and council must deal with it.

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But there is a solution – we need to take responsibility of our waste and what we generate.

Recycle properly to our yellow lidded bin.  Save your cans and bottles and take them to Containers for Change.  

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Since the scheme started and a dollar figure is now available for taking them in, how much cleaner are our streets! There is a lot less roadside rubbish.

Let’s go back to the old ways and have a scrap bin on the kitchen bench.  Feed your veggie scraps to your compost or keep a worm farm – it’s one of the things that can keep giving back. How’s that for a circular economy!  You feed your scraps to your worms, and they produce fertiliser for your plants and veggie patches.

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Ladies do you throw out your clothes that no longer fit the family? Take them to an op shop or cut them up for hubby for rags in the shed.  Better still, make money out of them by selling them at the Sweet Repeats Markets and get some extra cash for them. 

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Can you reduce your rubbish for your red lidded bin and, if so, how do you do that?

After recycling, feeding my worms and compost and going to Containers for Change, my family of two has produced one small bag of basically plastics for the red bin, weighing approximately three kilograms after one week. Now, you might say, “but I’m a family of five” and that’s fine, it’s all relative.  

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If you reduce, reuse and recycle or upcycle, you have now reduced your waste to landfill. Imagine if we all did this, how long would our landfill last and how much would council and ratepayers save in dealing with our rubbish?

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If you’d like to catch up with your Mackay region councillors in person, then come along to a Let’s Chat – Council Connect session.  The next one is in Walkerston at the Tommy Webster Memorial Hall on October 6th from 5pm to 6pm.

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