Waste Audit 2016

We had our annual Waste audit this week. The wastewise team did an amazingly efficient job of sorting our waste from one day into: organic waste, compostable paper, recyclable paper/ cardboard, non-recyclable plastic, recyclable plastic, glass, steel and all other waste.
Here is a time lapse of the audit.

In summary of this audit -  we found that from a total weight of 16.26kg  bound for landfill, 24% of your waste is residual waste (ie has to go to landfill), and the other 76%  are composed as follows :

56% compostable  (87%  food scraps and 13% compostable paper).   
15% mixed recyclables (mostly recyclable plastics such as drink bottles & yoghurt pots) 
5% recyclable paper and cardboard.     

Residual waste (must go to landfill) weighed in at 3.94 kg.     

We also learned that there were 116 units of Plastic Food Wrappers – eg chip packets and snack bar wrappers.     

Today's audit informs us that 26% of total available mixed recyclables are being diverted, and that 34% by weight of recycling bin contents were composed of contamination (items not able to be recycled - in this case a half full of peanut butter). 

Similarly, 81% of total available paper and cardboard are being recycled, with 5% of the paper collected being contamination by weight. 

Finally,  we found that 19% of organic matter is being captured for composting, with 0%  being contamination by weight.