It’s full of helpful tips about reducing waste, and sets out what can and can’t go in each of your household bins, and what you can drop off at Council’s waste facilities for free.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to read the guide and challenge yourself to do as much as you can to reduce waste at home.

This year's guide includes the recycling and garden organics collection calendar on one fridge-ready page, and a new A-Z guide on the back of the calendar to make it easy to find out the best way to dispose of unwanted items and what can and can’t be recycled.

A recent audit showed a contamination rate of 12.7 per cent in our yellow-lid recycling bins.

Most Australian recycling facilities operate with contamination figures between five and 10 per cent, but we’re still finding plastic bags, nappies, clothes and food in Eurobodalla recycling bins.

There’s definitely room for improvement, and we can all do our piece. As well as sorting items into the correct bins, we encourage you to avoid single-use items – things that are used once and then thrown away.

This was on our minds at Council’s first shopping trolley challenge this week, with Batemans Bay shoppers pledging to keep single-use items in their trolleys to a minimum.

By using re-usable shopping bags, choosing items that do not need packaging and avoiding single-use items like straws and takeaway coffee cups, our everyday choices can have a huge impact on reducing waste.

Your new household guide has more tips and resources about avoiding single-use items, so you can challenge yourself too.

- Eurobodalla Shire Council Mayor, Liz Innes.