Businesses in Wodonga will be encouraged to recycle more waste, as the council looks to cut back the amount going into landfill.
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The draft waste management strategy 2019-2023 was released for public comment after Monday night’s meeting, but councillors want even bigger ideas from the community to take it further so they can “catch up” to other regions with better recycling initiatives.
Cr Kat Bennett said the draft plan set targets for residential waste, but she wanted to see commercial targets as well.
“Lots of these employees at home already have the three bin system so implementing something like this wouldn’t be a huge behaviour change for them,” she said.
“We can’t just keep going as we are because this is a big issue, we need to probably take it to the next level.”
Industry and businesses generate about 80 per cent of Wodonga’s waste.
Cr Bennett said Albury and Wodonga councils were working on a collaboration to cut back single-use plastics, but she also wanted to see initiatives like green bins at public events.
Mayor Anna Speedie said although corporate groups were improving their recycling, more could be done.
“I would love to take some really bold steps,” she said.
“One of the things that continues to frustrate me is … we are missing a very large portion from our other two levels of government (federal and state) actually stepping up to the plate on this.
“I think it’s incredibly disappointing and it’s not just remiss of them, it astounds me that we’re not looking at worldwide practices.”
She said countries like Sweden had less than 1 per cent of waste go into landfill.
“Just saying ‘it’s too hard’ or ‘it could be costly’ I think is a poor excuse,” Cr Speedie said.
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