New cell at Ballarat Regional Landfill opens for waste disposal

The City of Ballarat’s new $5.7 million cell at the Ballarat Regional Landfill will begin taking the municipality’s household waste next week.

Known as Cell 1 Stage 2, the cell (a large space dug at a landfill site where waste is compacted and layered within the ground) covers an area of 19,900m2 and will hold 325,000m3 of household waste. It is estimated it will reach capacity in three years.

The existing and adjoining cell, known as Cell 1 Stage 1, is almost at capacity. The cell, which cost $4.1 million to construct, began having waste placed in it in February 2022. Cell I Stage 1 covers an area of 18,100m2, holds 250,000m3 of waste and was originally estimated to reach capacity in two and half years.  

Everything residents throw in their household waste bin is disposed of at the Ballarat Regional Landfill at Smythesdale. More than 23,000 tonnes of waste from 50,000 homes has been sent to the landfill in the 2022/23 financial year.  

Waste is also received from the Ballarat Transfer Station, surrounding municipalities and commercial volumes.  

Cell I Stage 2, which recently received its Environment Protection Authority landfill licence, will be the 14th cell at the Ballarat Regional Landfill. The entire landfill is expected to reach capacity with eight more cells by 2040. The City of Ballarat will then need to consider other options, which could include trucking waste to other landfills or sourcing alternate options.

The opening of the new cell comes after Ballarat City Council endorsed several changes to the municipality’s kerbside waste and recycling services at its October meeting.

The City of Ballarat will introduce kerbside collection changes including a new weekly Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) collection, household waste collection changing from weekly to fortnightly, the introduction of a monthly residential glass bin collection and for mixed recyclables to continue to be collected fortnightly.

City of Ballarat Mayor, Cr Des Hudson said while almost every single person uses their bin, we often forget that it ends up in landfill.

“Residents across the Ballarat municipality pay for our waste disposal to the tune of $28,000 a day,” he said.

“A weekly FOGO collection and fortnightly household waste collection will help to reduce waste going to landfill, however we cannot keep disposing of waste forever at the Ballarat Regional Landfill.”

The rollout for the proposed FOGO and household waste collection changes will take place at a date to be determined. Meanwhile, the City of Ballarat will assess the impact of the State Government’s Container Deposit Scheme before implementing the kerbside glass collection service.  

Construction of the new cell began in September 2022 and was completed in June 2023. The City of Ballarat expects to begin work constructing the next cell in 2025.  

To find out more about kerbside collection changes visit ballarat.vic.gov.au/sortingourwaste