Kylie Whitfort’s family of six often finds its bins “chock-a-block” after just seven days.

Mrs Whitfort said family members often found themselves jamming cereal boxes, newspapers and cardboard into their red topped bin.

“Milk cartons are a big thing. We try to squash them down, but we can go through six litres of milk a day,” Mrs Whitfort said.

On Tuesday the City of Greater Bendigo launched a public education campaign after discovering average greater Bendigo red topped bins contained 62 per cent recyclables and organics.

The campaign’s television advertisement states that “greater Bendigo residents, well, we aren’t that great at recycling”.

Council’s presentation and assets director Craig Lloyd believed many people were confused about what items they could and could not throw away.

The campaign will provide useful information about items they were not recycling and were not aware they could.

Yet residents like Mrs Whitfort have argued recycling and organic waste would go into the right bins if council emptied them more regularly.

Mrs Whitfort would like both her recycling and organics bin emptied every week.

Mr Lloyd said her comments were consistent with recent feedback about bin collection.

His team was undertaking a waste services review and was considering “all different options” for kerbside collection services. 

Mr Lloyd flagged a fully-costed proposal to councilors later this year, though in the meantime council officers were preparing a public survey to gauge demand.

“Perhaps we could see general waste collection dropped back to one a fortnight, with recycling and organics becoming weekly services – or all sorts of other combinations,” he said.

In the meantime, Mr Lloyd said there were some things people could do to minimise the amount of recyclables going to landfill.

“One of the things we regularly see when we empty out bins is that people are not crushing down their recycling. If they have, for example, a bottle of coke they can flatten it so they can fit more in the bin,” he said.

“The other thing people might not be aware of is that we have a larger bin available.”

While standard-issue recycling bins were 240 litres in volume, the larger option was 360 litres. It came with a one-off $46 payment and came with no extra ongoing charges.