What happens to the rubbish that we put in your skip bins? Is any of it recycled?

Most of the rubbish that we collect in our skip bins across Perth is brought back to one of our transfer stations.  A transfer station in the waste industry is a place where rubbish is sorted and materials recovered so that they can then be transferred to the appropriate recycling facility.  Our resource recovery rate is approximately 85%, meaning that approximately only 15% of your rubbish goes to landfill, which is of great benefit to the environment in more ways than one.

Perth Bin Hire is dedicated to minimising the amount of waste that goes to landfill to help prevent continued contamination of the environment by the associated toxins, leachate and greenhouse gases.  Furthermore, a commitment to resource recovery and recycling means that we no longer have to extract virgin resources from our environment to the extent we once did.

As the old saying goes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.  Well once this just referred to the fact that what one person considered to be worthless rubbish such as an old couch, in fact had intrinsic value to the person who needed a couch, or who just found the couch desirable.  It was really a comment on perspective.  This is still evident today, which I’m sure we all notice on verge collection days or when we have a skip bin full of junk sitting on our front lawn.

Now the statement has a much broader meaning.  Whole industries have developed due to the recognition that rubbish or waste is a valuable resource – a treasure if you like.  Think about it!  It is an unlimited resource which is not extracted from the environment.

By definition, “resource recovery is the selective extraction of disposed materials for a specific next use.”

Next use can refer to :

• Recycling-The production of the same type of material from the discarded items eg glass or paper being processed to produce new glass or paper products
• Reuse – Using the discarded material in the production process of a different material eg food and plant waste for composting or crushed glass as a component of road base.
• Transformation – Using the material to produce something more complex such as energy.

In any one of Perth Bin Hire’s skip bins, the following ‘resources’ may be found, sorted and recovered – paper, cardboard, metals, white goods, plastic, soil, green waste, rubble, timber, mattresses, glass, furniture…..The list goes on.

At our transfer stations trained staff use specialized equipment to recover and sort the various resources so that they can then be transferred to the appropriate facility to be recycled, reused or transformed for further consumption.

Perth Bin Hire has its own glass recycling operation.  Other resources are transferred to organisations such as Allied Metals, Sims Metal, AAA Metal, Australian Paper Recovery, Damian Cole Group, Elan Tyre Recyclers, Pure Earth, Eastern Metropilitan Regional Council, Soft Landings and the list goes on.