Inside Waste’s 2022 Waste Innovation and Recycling Awards have recognised a Western Australian Council for its multilingual waste toolkit.
The annual awards, which recognise the top performers in Australia’s recycling and waste industry, announced the City of Wanneroo’s WasteSorted – Talking My Language’ toolkit has been crowned Community Engagement Success of the Year.
The ‘WasteSorted – Talking My Language’ toolkit was developed to overcome the difficulties experienced by culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities in understanding waste services information due to language and literacy barriers.
The toolkit was rolled out across the City in August 2021 and is available in eleven languages including Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Macedonian, Simplified Chinese/ Mandarin, Tagalog, Italian and Vietnamese.
City of Wanneroo Mayor, Linda Aitken, said the award demonstrated the City’s commitment to reducing bin contamination, diverting waste from landfill and increasing recycling.
“More than 40 per cent of the City’s population were born overseas and 20 per cent of residents speak a language other than English at home, so it’s extremely important that we are able to make waste information accessible to these residents,” Mayor Aitken said.
“This award recognises the hard work the Waste Education Team has put into delivering this innovative program and working alongside multicultural community leaders to reduce waste.”
The project was funded by the State Government through the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Account, and administered by the Waste Authority.
