A national standard for kerbside bins has been established, stipulating a consistent colour for each waste stream across Australia. Standard AS4123 sets uniform guidelines for all state governments and local councils, designed to facilitate easier waste sorting and better recycling across council, state, and national areas.
To reduce costs to ratepayers and environmental impacts, Fleurieu Regional Waste Authority (FRWA) and Council will NOT do a universal lid changeover; nor require residents to purchase new lids to meet the standard. However, new bins and replacement lids will soon feature the new colours.
National standardised bin lid colours:
• General landfill waste – red (previously blue on the mainland, Kangaroo Island bins are already red)
• Recycling – yellow (same)
• FOGO (food organics garden organics) – lime green (previously dark green).
Existing blue landfill and dark green FOGO lidded bins will still be collected.
We wish to reassure residents with existing blue-lidded landfill waste and dark green-lidded FOGO bins that they do not need to do anything; these bins will continue to be collected as normal. The decision not to replace existing functional but old coloured lids helps maintain our region’s environmental and responsible waste management focus of not creating unnecessary plastic waste/recycling. This decision also minimises expenditure of resident and business funds, whether directly or through council rates.
Through normal bin life-cycle attrition, blue and dark green lids will gradually transition to the new national colours when the existing bin needs replacing. The useful life expectancy of a kerbside bin is deemed around 7 years, though many last a lot longer. Therefore, we expect to see both red and blue landfill, and dark green and lime FOFGO lids out for collection for many years to come.
Exceptional Circumstances (EC) bins
Any Exceptional Circumstances (EC) bins will now be denoted only by a current sticker on the front, not by a different-coloured lid.
Bin specifications, information and collection tips
Our Kerbside Bins page has lots of information about bins as well as top tips to make sure your bin gets collected.