Wagait Shire council doesn’t provide a waste collection service – residents must take their own waste to the local dump (see earlier post). There are separate areas at the dump for different types of waste: a trench for putrescible and other general household waste, an area for green waste, some bins for recyclables, and an area for large, non-putrescible items like cars, furniture, building materials, etc.
The council has had bins for glass, plastic, and aluminium drink cans for about a year, because local residents wanted to be able to recycle. However, they have had no success in finding a way to dispose of the collected recyclables. Wagait Shire is 130km from Darwin and Darwin’s a very long way from anywhere where recyclable materials are processed, which means recycling is not really economically viable.