Recycle Mate – helping us to recycle right

To help residents answer these questions council has enlisted the help of a new web-based app to assist residents with recycling and help reduce the waste they send to landfill.

Council has recently partnered with Recycle Mate – a new web-based app which has been tailored to ensure the information is relevant to our Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).

Recycle Mate can either be accessed online or via a mobile phone app and users can search or simply take a photo of the item they wish to dispose of and within seconds find out which bin it can go into – it’s that easy!

Mayor Greg Williamson said anything that council can do to assist residents in “recycling right” was a positive step forward.

“Council is committed to reducing our contamination levels. Contamination is simply putting the wrong item in the wrong bin,” Mayor Williamson said.

“Common contamination items we find at the MRF range from nappies and green waste to bottle top lids and soft plastics,” he said.

“Contamination is costly – council pays a fee to dispose of contaminated recycling to landfill, so anything we can do to reduce the rate, benefits not only our environment but our ratepayers.”

With National Recycling Week now in full swing, now is the time to get familiar with what can and can’t be recycled.

To find out more head to recyclemate.com.au or visit council’s A to Z of waste disposal page -mackay.qld.gov.au/wastedisposal.

Recycle Mate is a nation-wide project led by the Australian recycling industry though strategic direction from the Austrian Council of Recycling (ACOR). Both state and federal governments have invested in the app as part of the waste management strategy.