Local waste management group NetWaste is celebrating its 20th birthday by recognising the milestones it has achieved to work with member councils and raise the profile of waste management within the NetWaste Region.

NetWaste was established in 1995 to provide collaborative approaches to waste and resource management.

It consists of 27 member councils which cover more than 40% of the state. During the past two decades, the focus of the group has evolved considerably to now deliver targeted waste projects, education and community engagement programs as well as member council assistance.

“The initial aim of NetWaste was to ensure essential waste service requirements were met for residents and to deliver service efficiencies via regional waste management contracts,” said NetWaste Executive Officer Steve Campbell.

“We’ve achieved that and so much more in the past 20 years. We’re very proud of the milestones we as a group have been able to reach over that time – be it kerbside recycling and green waste collections in several communities or educating residents about reducing food waste with cooking classes and workshops.”

Collaboration between neighbouring regional and rural councils to reduce the costs of waste management and establish share facilities has been a great success for NetWaste.

“Waste management costs per unit are naturally greater for rural and regional residents than for their metropolitan counterparts, because of the significant travel distances and low population density,” said Mr Campbell.

“Our member councils get access to the alliance network we have established to help overcome some of these issues. Joint contracting has seen significant savings for councils including Blayney, Orange, Parkes, Forbes and Cabonne while partnerships between other councils like Gilgandra and Bogan, Cowra and Weddin for kerbside recycling processing has seen affordable options offered to residents.”

Planning strategically and thinking regionally for waste management has become the focus of the organisation and during the past few years many communities have benefited from this approach.

·         Over the last two years NetWaste in collaboration with our members councils has been able to attract over $8.5 million into our region through the state government Waste Not Recycle More Program.

·         The village of Millthorpe in the Blayney Shire was the inaugural winner of the Village Waste Reduction Challenge this year, winning a grant to design, construct and promote a new water bottle refill station to reduce the number of plastic water bottles thrown away

·         Community Recycling Centres have been established in Gilgandra and Bathurst in the last twelve months, giving residents a facility to take old paint, used oil and gas cylinders and batteries. Three more CRCs are in the planning stages at Dubbo, Blue Mountains and Broken Hill

·         The Household Chemical Cleanout is again operating across member councils in November, collecting old poisons, house paint and cleaning products

·         Since 2011, almost 500,000 litres of used motor oil has also been collected from residents that would normally have ended up in landfill through the Used Oil Collection

·         Bathurst, Forbes and Parkes residents will have a new food and garden waste kerbside collection from next April

·         Six member councils will also clamp down on illegal dumping in their shires under a new campaign to reduce dumping of waste in national parks, recreational areas and private properties. The Lithgow, Forbes, Parkes, Cobar, Central Darling and Lachlan Councils hope to reduce the trend of people dumping animal carcasses, asbestos and construction materials and old car parts in remote or dense bushland with a targeted media campaign and additional inspectors in 2016

·         The annual Waste2Art project has resulted in thousands of entries of artworks since being established in 2005

Media Contact: Sue Clarke 6393 8771 or 0400 336 508