Lake Macquarie Waste Fact File

Solid Waste Generation

Lake Macquarie LGA has 72,714 homes serviced. This represents a population of over 200,000 residents. Lake Macquarie City Council operates a large waste management centre at Wilton Road Awaba processing an estimated 160,000 tonnes of waste each year.

Awaba Waste Management Centre

Lake Macquarie's landfill is the Awaba Waste Disposal Site, located on Wilton Rd, Awaba. It is estimated that this 3.4 million cubic metre landfill has approximately 40% capacity remaining and estimates suggest it will reach its full capacity in around 12 years. When this time arrives, the site will be rehabilitated and another site for waste disposal will be used. In the meantime, Council will continue to work to reduce waste to landfill through initiatives such as domestic kerbside recycling.

Recycling

Lake Macquarie residents have disposed of 169,120 Tonnes of recyclables over the past 12 years.

This has made a significant and positive contribution to the local environment. The contributions so far are:

• Enough water saved that would fill 50,931 average size backyard pools.
• Enough energy saved to power 130,410 homes for an entire year.
• Saved around 1.423 million trees from harvest by recycling paper and cardboard, producing enough oxygen to sustain over 711,000 humans.
• Saved 55,065,427 litres of crude oil, enough to make approximately 27,500,000 litres of petrol.
• Recycled enough steel to make 3,750 family sized cars.

Council has also developed a Waste Education Centre at the former Teralba Sanitary Depot. This facility includes worm farm operations, composting facilities and no-dig fruit and vegetable garden, to show residents and school groups how they can avoid disposing of kitchen and garden wastes to landfill by using domestic worm farms and compost bins.

For more information on managing waste in Lake Macquarie or to arrange visits to the worm farm, contact LMCC Waste Education officers on
49 210 333.

» Lake Macquarie City Council Recycling Statistics 2008-2009