Recycling resumes in Moonee Valley

Recycling is back to normal today following the reopening of SKM’s Laverton North plant after a two month closure.

We’ve entered into an interim agreement with SKM receivers KordaMentha until 31 October 2019, with the hopes a new buyer will be found before then.

This means all of our yellow bin kerbside collections will now be sent for processing and Moonee Valley residents can resume recycling and putting out their yellow-lid bins as normal.

Moonee Valley Mayor Cr Narelle Sharpe said residents can be assured that their recycling will be processed.

“We’d like to thank everyone for their understanding during this time and particularly to those people who went out of their way to bring their recycling to the Transfer Station,” Cr Sharpe said.

As always, it is vital that people ensure the correct items go in their recycling bins, and avoid putting out recycling in plastic bags or anything on this list that can’t be recycled. The recycling processing plant will not be accepting contaminated recycling so it’s important we all do the right thing to ensure our recycling is processed.

The agreement with KordaMentha is positive news for Council. We had been forced to send our recycling to landfill since SKM closed its doors in July. We were one of 33 councils affected. A number of arrangements were implemented during this time, including enabling residents to drop off recycling material to our Transfer Station.

“We will continue to work with the Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group and the State Government to investigate long-term solutions to manage recycling,” Cr Sharpe said.

“At the very least we believe a Container Deposit Scheme, as is available in all other states and territories, is crucial to any recycling system as glass continues to be a problematic element of any recycling system.

“We’d like to remind people to please continue to avoid, reduce or reuse wherever possible. We have a number of initiatives in place to make this easier, including our free TechCollect e-waste drop off point at the Transfer Station and Specialty Recycling Stations at our Avondale Heights, Niddrie and Sam Merrifield Libraries.”