Ms Bruns who has studied conservation and works in waste education spoke to the Bombala Times in an effort to shed some light on recycling so that it could be properly embraced by the community.

At the time Ms Bruns provided some interesting information about recycling small items, however that information needed to be confirmed by council’s transfer station, Re.Group.

“Knowing how the new system works is the first step,” Ms Bruns said.

All recyclable materials can be placed into your yellow lidded bin which is collected from your kerbside fortnightly.

Recyclable materials include metal, paper, cardboard, glass and hard plastics.

“These materials should ideally be clean and dry but they don’t have to be sparkling.

“Materials should be placed loosely into the bin, not contained in plastic bags as this may be confused with landfill and hence contaminate the stream,” Ms Bruns said.

Ms Brun said that the materials are then separated at the transfer station.

“You can imagine that small items are difficult to capture among the tonnes of materials, so small items such as those tiny foil Easter egg wrappers or plastic bottle lids can become a problem.

“They can be recycled but to help the system, it is best to ensure they are big enough to capture,” she said.

Snowy Monaro Regional Council’s recycling contractors Re.Group have recently installed a trommel for material recovery at their facility off Mugga Lane in Hume.

Garth Lamb, Business Development Officer of Re.Group explains about the trommel the first mechanical process that separates material at the facility.

“The trommel is basically a big rotating tube with different sized holes in it.

“The main reason for this is to separate broken glass from the paper fibre; small pieces of glass fall though the small holes at the front end of the tube, while the paper and cardboard materials move through to the back end of the tube.

“In the middle most of the containers like plastic bottles will fall out.

“The small pieces from the trommel are sent to the glass processing circuit, however if you had put “say” a plastic lid loose into your bin, this item would also likely fall through the holes and end up at the glass circuit.

“Unfortunately the small items which are not glass, end up as residual was and get disposed of.

“If you put your plastic lids inside a container (or leave them screwed on) they will go into the container processing circuit and be sorted into the plastics pile and recycled,” he said.

The same thing happens with small pieces of foil which can simply be collected a little bit at a time and scrunched together into a ball that’s at least fist size so that it is a similar size and shape of an aluminium can, and therefore follows the same path to being recovered.