Waste in Kingston

Waste and Recycling is one of Council’s largest services and affects nearly every household.  

There are 65,000 households with Council bins that collect almost 60,000 tonnes of garbage, recycling and organic waste every year.

There are also over 70,000 customer interactions each year related to :

• Bin requests
• Hard Waste bookings
• Tree Pruning and Christmas Tree collections
• Dumped rubbish removal
• Public Litter Bins

To shape the next five years of our Waste and Recycling, the Council is undertaking an initial consultation to help us prepare a Waste Strategy.

Things we must do:

• Make sure every household has a garbage and recycling service.
• Ensure the household bins are managed appropriately, with all contents disposed of and recycled through licensed EPA providers.

Things we also do:

• Provide Hard Rubbish and Tree Pruning collections to households.
• Maintain our public spaces to ensure they are clean with a public litter bin network and illegally dumped rubbish is removed from Council roads.
• Provide information to the community on how to dispose of and recycle household items.

What we aim to achieve :

• Assess the community satisfaction levels with the existing Council waste services.
• Determine if improvements can be made to Council waste services.
• Find out if there are any new recycling services that people would like to see. 

Household services are paid through a Waste Charge on Rates notices. Public waste services come from general Council Rates. Council delivers cost-effective, sustainable services using modern technologies.

• Council currently recycles and composts more than half of everything collected in household bins - totalling 31,000 tonnes (approx. 30 Aquatic Centre pools!).
• Every week over 120,000 bins emptied from Kingston households.
• The garbage trucks visit almost every household at least once per week.
• The contents of the Food and Garden waste bins are composted for use on market gardens and farms.
• There were 32,000 hard waste bookings last year, including over 12,000 mattresses!
• Council collected over 500m3 of soft plastic last year, which was recycled.
• Council has already committed to a Waste to Energy contract that will accept the contents of garbage bins from 2029 and produce electricity and steam for industry.