Orange mayor Reg Kidd opened the Community Recycling Centre on Tuesday, located between the existing recycling skip bins and the recycling shop at the Ophir Resource Recovery Centre.

Unlike the skip bins, which are intended for regular household recycling, the CRC is specifically for water- and oil-based paints, oils, gas bottles, fire extinguishers, fluorescent lamps, smoke detectors and batteries and is free to use.

The CRC will also accept e-waste, which includes mobile phones and virtually any smaller electrical appliance.

Orange City Council established the CRC using a $190,756 grant from the NSW Government’s Waste Less, Recycle More program, one of 100 across the state.

Orange mayor Reg Kidd said the facility was the third addition since 1998 when the council established the first shed alongside Wangarang Industries.

“It’s a lot easier for people to come through, out of the weather, and drop things off,” he said.

Cr Kidd said the facility targeted both less-mobile ratepayers and waste items the council wanted to keep away from landfill.  

“If you’ve got something where it’s quite convenient and people can just come through, pull up [and unload in] a couple of seconds, they’ll use it – when it becomes an inconvenience to them, they won’t,” he said.

“As a society we’re starting to recognise that we’re fairly wasteful and there’s ways to be not so wasteful.”

Council environmental committee chair and councillor Mario Previtera said the system was straightforward.

“There are clearly marked places to take each kind of recyclable waste,” he said.

“It’s right next door to the Recycling Shop, so if you’re taking some old furniture to donate there, you can take your old fire extinguisher or gas bottle on the same trip.

“There’s so much material in an old computer or a TV that can be recycled.”

Wangarang Industries chief executive Kevin McGuire said employees ran the weighbridge and recovery centre selling salvaged items. 

“We don’t really know how busy the CRC’s going to be – we would expect the traffic to increase and it could well enable us to employ more people,” he said.

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