Seven weeks after the City of Ballarat's new no-glass recycling regime was introduced, contamination - putting non-recyclable items in the recycling bin - remains an issue.
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A number of loads of paper, aluminium, and recyclable plastics have been sent for processing by Australian Paper Recovery in Truganina, and the amount of glass has now dropped to less than five per cent per load.
However, one load was rejected and sent back to Ballarat.
The glass drop-off sites continue to be reviewed - council has increased pick-up to four days a week with an on-call service, and the sites at the Ballarat Greyhound Racing Club and Big W now have two skip bins each.
"In December, we plan to begin trials of real-time fill-level sensors that will provide automatic alerts when the skips are approaching full (capacity)," a council statement reads.
Investigations are under way to add additional drop-off sites - right now, there are no sites in north-eastern suburbs like Soldiers Hill or Brown Hill.
The glass is being taken to two facilities in Wendouree to be aggregated or sorted.
"There is still investigations going on into finding continuous offtakes for the material," the statement reads.
"We are working to get at least two outlets for the material. There is not a guaranteed offtake market locally for these products yet."
Bin inspectors, or kerbside recycling advisors, have completed more than 26,000 "surveys" of bins.
"Initially, we saw 40 to 45 per cent of yellow-lid recycling bins tagged and advisory information provided to residents," the statement reads.
READ MORE: Where can I drop off my glass?
"In recent weeks this has declined to just below 30 per cent, and we continue with our aim to see this drop to under 5 per cent. We have significantly reduced the amount of glass observed in yellow-lid recycle bins to below 5 per cent."
However, the plastic bags, bagged recyclables, bagged general rubbish, and unclean waste, which includes food scraps, continues to be a concern.
"There has been a slight increase in the amount of material sent to landfill, however this is line with the seasonal increase we experience each year between September and November," the statement reads.
"We will continue to monitor this."
Australian Paper Recovery's managing director Darren Thorpe said the initial results have been good - uncontaminated recycling is more valuable for end users creating new products.
"Residents are doing a great job removing glass," he said.
"But, we need to improve a lot on the contamination levels."
Residents should only put paper, aluminium and steel cans, and clean plastic bottles from the kitchen, bathroom and laundry in their recycling bins.
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