City of Melville Crowned Champions at Waste Awards

The City of Melville was crowned champion of the most popular category, Communication Engagement Success of the Year at the recent 2019 Waste and Resource Recovery (WARR) awards.

Winners were announced at the annual gala dinner on 14 November at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

The City of Melville won for its grassroots, ground up engagement program, ‘Talking Trash the Melville Way’. This category drew the greatest number of nominations (18), making it a tight race and a challenging judging process.

Over the last 18 months, the City of Melville has spent many hours planning and investigating alternative, more appealing ways to engage and educate residents on all things waste.

The three-bin FOGO trial was conducted two years ago to 7,000 households throughout Melville. The trial showed that council needed to move away from a corporate approach and create a grass roots, ground up approach to engage the community.

From rap waste videos, to gaming apps and interactive information sessions, they have changed the way they communicate.

Rather than just offering the standard three-bin FOGO service, they made adjustments and provided free larger recycling bins as well as offering free general waste bin audits to those struggling with capacity issues. it’s not a one size fits all system and their understanding that larger families and households have different needs.

The general waste bin audits provided a great opportunity to provide personalised feedback to households to help them better sort their waste.
Combined, these initiatives have made a huge impact on not only diversion from landfill targets and contamination levels, but also reduced customer calls, complaints and confusion about what goes in what bin.