Waste Services
Ararat Rural City Council provides a wide range of waste and recycling services. Many of these services are supplemented by commercial services within our community.
Ararat Rural City Council is part of the Grampians Regional Waste Management Group.
Other member Councils of this Group are Northern Grampians Shire, Horsham Rural City and Yarriambiack Shire. Member Councils work together to get a consistent approach across the region, to share waste management and educational resources and jointly tender to minimise the costs to individual councils.
The primary interfaces that ratepayers will have our services are:
- The waste collection in Ararat, Buangor, Elmhurst, Lake Bolac, Mount Cole, Moyston, Pomonal, Streatham, Warrak, Wickliffe and Willaura and along some of the transit routes to the landfill.
- The recycling collection in Ararat
- The waste, recycling and re-use drop off at our Transfer Stations in Ararat, Elmhurst, Lake Bolac, Moyston, Pomonal, Tatyoon, Streatham and Willaura.
Council do not provide a green waste collection. Most small Councils who provide this service, put the collected waste into landfill due to the high costs of removing the contamination to make it useable after composting. Council receives all its sorted green waste at their transfer stations, where it is checked for contamination. Sorted green waste is much cheaper to dispose of than mixed waste. The green waste received is generally shredded and composted, with the clean material then used as mulch under the region’s excellent grape vines.
Alternatively, give your family the delight of running a “Worm Farm” for your green waste and organic food scraps or set up composting at home. It’s really easy if you follow a few basic rules. Council often run courses on the fundamentals and watch out for some of the bonuses that Council offer from time to time.
For those ratepayers who do not have a trailer
- Try home composting or worm farming
- Use fold-up reusable garden containers and take them to the transfer station in your car boot
- If you have more green waste than will fit in their Waste Bin, contact a commercial skip providers, who will drop off and collect various size skips from your property
- Consider when employing a gardener or arborist, get them to take their green waste away or get it chipped or mulched for your garden.
Council does not provide commercial recycling as in many cases the skips required cannot be collected by our normal pickup and there are private businesses already providing collection services.