Strategy Overview

Strategy Overview:

The draft Resource Recovery (Organics, Recycling and Waste) Strategy and Action Plan 2020-2028 proposes to fulfill the Council-endorsed motion of becoming ‘a zero waste City by 2030 and sets the goal of becoming the first zero waste city in Australia’.

This is proposed to be achieved by recycling and composting more, reducing the amount of waste we produce, reducing the amount of waste materials that should not go in the recycling or compost streams and diverting food waste from the red waste bin and into the compost bin. The City of Adelaide’s ‘Zero-Waste Key Performance Indicators’ (KPIs) are:

  • Divert 75 per cent of residential waste from landfill;
  • Divert 90 per cent of waste from City of Adelaide activities and events from landfill;
  • Reduce waste generation by 5 per cent per capita;
  • Reduce contamination to below 10 per cent in yellow comingled recycling;
  • Reduce food waste in the kerbside residential waste bin by 50 per cent.


We plan on achieving this through 5 Priority Items including:

  1. Strive to eliminate food waste and keep food scraps out of landfill.
  2. Provide waste and recycling education for all residents, businesses, and users of our city.
  3. Foster innovation, new technologies, and data collection so that we can make long-lasting improvements.
  4. Consider the impacts of waste in all the decision-making at Council, including development applications, building plans, product choices, manufacturing, and waste systems design.
  5. Advocate for circular economy practices, and align our own policies towards this long-term change.

The ‘Priority Items’ listed above will target a range of target stakeholders to ensure that programs and systems implemented are tailored to these users.


Our proposed ‘Target Areas’ include:

Target Area 1: Residents & the Community
Support residents and the community using the residential kerbside collection to achieve zero-waste at home.

What are we considering?

  • Making it easier to divert food waste from the landfill;
  • Providing an extensive and multi-lingual education program to help reduce waste and recycle more, including information about waste management best practices specially for apartments and building managers;
  • Improving our data collection, and communicating the cost of waste;
  • Improving waste management in new developments in both the building and occupancy phases;
  • Supporting communities and event organisers with more tools and resources for waste-free events.

Target Area 2: Residents in Multi-Unit Dwellings
Tailor supportive services to residential multi-unit dwellings (including apartments, low-rises, high rises) in development through to occupancy.
Target Area 3: Businesses
Expand support for businesses eligible for kerbside collection.

What are we considering?

  • Investigating the provision of green organics collection service to City of Adelaide serviced businesses;
  • Developing information tailored for businesses and business owners and staff;
  • Encouraging waste reduction and resource sharing to support a circular economy;
  • Establishing robust resource management plans as part of business-as-usual.

Target Area 4: Public Spaces
Establish public space like streets and Park Lands as conduits for resource recovery.

What are we considering?

  • Investigating improving resource recovery in public places;
  • Ensuring that the systems we do implement make it easy for people to divert materials from landfill;
  • Investigating technological innovation that can help us capture more resources;
  • Considering the long-term waste effect from our decisions when designing new infrastructure like street upgrades, or street furniture.

Target Area 5: City of Adelaide Operations
Establish the City of Adelaide’s operations, businesses, facilities and events as visible leaders in exceptional waste avoidance and management.

What are we considering?

  • Mandating diversion of food waste and supporting tenants and staff to do this;
  • Making resource recovery part of the workplace culture in all buildings, and leased facilities and establishing resource recovery ambassadors to help drive this;
  • Collecting more detailed data about waste generation and resource recovery so we can see how we are doing over time;
  • Reviewing how we are doing every year, and allocating funding to support our KPI’s;
  • Driving programs and initiatives that position the City of Adelaide as a leader in resource recovery;
  • Advocating for improvement in relevant policy and legislation to support reducing waste, recycling more and developing a circular economy.


See also the proposed strategy matrix in Attachment B.

You may also wish to read the full Draft Resource Recovery Strategy (Organics, Recycling and Waste) 2020-2028 by clicking here and the Draft Resource Recovery Action Plan (Organics, Recycling and Waste) 2020-2028 by clicking here.

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