Maitland Waste Fact File

Solid Waste Generation

There are over 70,000 residents residing in Maitland LGA. HRR now services 24,576 homes every fortnight at June 2009. Maitland residents generate approximately 59,000 tonnes of household garbage every year which is an average of 890 kilos per person. With the Maitland LGA being one of Australia's fastest growing Council areas, the volume of waste will only increase further and in turn the problem of disposing of such large volumes of waste product.

Recycling

Maitland residents are great recyclers with the amount of recycling almost double of when we started recycling together in 1997. In fact in 97-98 we recycled 2,536 tonnes from Maitland LGA compared to 5,380 in 2008-2009.

Over the past 12 years 47,319 tonnes of product has been sold for reuse from collection in the Maitland area.

Maitland residents have made a significant and positive contribution to the environment simply by recycling, these are:

• Saved enough water to fill 14,250 average backyard swimming pools.
• Saved enough power to supply 36,490 homes with an entire years supply of energy.
• Reduced air pollution equal to removing 5,670 cars from the road permanently.
• Saved 398,125 trees from harvest in turn enough oxygen from these trees saved will sustain 199,000 humans.
• Recycled enough steel to make 672 family sized sedans.

» Maitland City Council Recycling Statistics 2008-2009