Green bin

Our annual roll of 150 bags is delivered to Lake Mac homes, late-May and throughout June, along with the annual waste collection calendar. 

Additional bags can be collected free of charge from select Council facilities including:

• Lake Mac Libraries including Redhead Community Library
• Council’s Administrative Centre, Speers Point
• Council’s Works Depot, Boolaroo - 8am-4pm
• Awaba Waste Management Facility, Awaba - 8am-4pm
• Landcare and Sustainable Living Centre, Booragul
• Coming soon to Edgeworth Memorial Neighbourhood Centre, Monday - Thursday 9am - 5pm (closed Fridays)

You can order an additional roll of 150 compostable bags (equivalent to 3 free top up packs) online, a postage fee of $17 applies

Order more green bags online

Bags may also be purchased from vending machines located at lower level Charlestown Square and Stockland Glendale outside Coles.

If you are purchasing compostable bags, they must comply with Australian Standard AS4736 or AS5810. We recommend only using the green compostable bags from the sources above. Compostable bags of other colours are hard to distinguish from plastic and will be marked as contamination in the green bin.

If your bin is missed or damaged, please call us on 4921 0333 within two working days.

Your green bin is owned by our waste contractor, Solo Resource Recovery, and must remain at the property if you move house.

You can organise a green waste service for your new property online or by calling us on 4921 0333.

Do it online

Yes, food waste decays quickly so it needs to be collected weekly.

Most households generate two or three bags of food waste a week. Your few bags may not seem like much, but across our 80,000 households, it can account for a lot of food waste diverted from landfill each week.

With the exception of hard shells from some seafood, all food can go in your green bin including:

• cooked food and leftover scraps
• grains, breads, rice, cereals and pasta
• egg shells, cheese, yoghurt and other dairy products
• fruit and vegetable peelings and scraps
• coffee grinds, tea leaves and tea bags
• meat, bones, poultry and seafood (except the hard shells of oysters, scallops, mussels and clams)

If unaccepted waste, or contamination, is found in your green bin, it may not be emptied. A sticker will be placed on your green bin and your bin will only be emptied once the contamination has been removed.

If your green bin is stickered three times, you will receive a final warning letter, and if your bin remains contaminated, your green waste service may be suspended.

You can use any container to sort food scraps in your kitchen, including an ice cream container or a small bucket with a lid.

Food scraps bins can be purchased from Council's Administration Centre in Speers Point, all Lake Mac Libraries or similar bins can be purchased from hardware stores or from local supplier Source Separation Systems.

Bring your old, clean food scraps bin to the library to be recycled into plastic for new bins.

Fruit flies can be a common problem all year long, but most often appear in the summer when temperatures increase. Fruit flies are attracted to overripe bananas, bruised fruits, potatoes, onions or other unrefrigerated produce left on your counter or in your pantry. Although overripe fruits and vegetables are their breeding ground of choice, they also breed in anything moist that has some fermenting material on it, such as drains, the foods scraps bin and even cleaning rags.

If you are experiencing ongoing issues with fruit flies, we recommend changing the compostable bag in your food scraps bin daily. Another option may be to consider storing fruits in the fridge in warmer months.

One option that can be used to remove fruit flies is to set a 'trap' on the bench top. Pour one or two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in a bowl, cup or glass jar. You can use other vinegars of a cider variety that you have on hand, such as red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, but not white vinegar. Cover the top tightly with plastic wrap. It may also help to place a rubber band around it to make sure the plastic wrap stays in place. Put some small holes in the plastic wrap and leave it on the kitchen bench top, near the affected area, for a couple of days. The flies will crawl in and they won't be able to crawl out.

As an ongoing deterrent, you could also try using some natural essential oils. This involves a few drops of tea tree oil or eucalyptus oil in water in a spray bottle and use around affected areas.

You are not required to bag your food waste before placing it in your green bin, but if you do, you must use a Australian certified compostable bag. These are provided by Council at no cost. Please don't use biodegradable bags, standard plastic bags or bin liners in the green bin. These do not break down during our composting process.

Alternatively, you can line your food scraps bin with newspaper.

Collected green waste is taken to the Lake Macquarie Organics Resource Recovery Facility at Awaba and processed into Australian Standard compost to be used for landscaping and agricultural use.

Most pet droppings can be placed in the green bin for weekly collection, provided it is not bagged in plastic. Droppings can be contained in a compostable bag, wrapped in newspaper or placed loose in the bin.

Cat droppings and kitty litter should be disposed of in your garbage bin, not your green bin, as these cannot be processed at our composting facility.

All common garden weeds can go in your green bin. All other weeds should be disposed of in your garbage bin. This includes noxious or 'declared priority weeds', such as Madeira Vine, Mother of Millions and varieties of Asparagus Fern. For further information on these weed types, visit Department of Primary Industries.

It's your choice as to whether you use the green bin for food waste. The green bin provides an extra way to manage food waste that isn't typically composted or put into a worm farm at home, such as meat, bones, dairy, seafood, onions and citrus.

Your green bin accepts all types of food. The only items that cannot be placed into your green bin are hard shells from seafood like oysters, clams, mussels and scallops.

Plates, cups and cutlery made of bio-plastics cannot be placed in the green bin. These items are not 100% plant based, often contain plastic and are therefore not compostable.