In that first year, a massive 10,000 tonnes of organic waste has been sent for composting, and not  into landfill.

Despite this success, Wagga City Council's own figures show we are not yet as good at recycling as we should be.

A council audit late last year has revealed that the contamination rate of the city's recycling bins is running at almost double the national average.

Similarly, a lot of the items tossed into the general waste bins could actually be recycled or sent for composting with the green waste.

It's just not good enough.

We live on a planet with limited resources and a growing human population. We cannot keep chewing through resources at the rate we are now.

So much of what we currently use is not only finite, but this use is also damaging the planet.

Every single one of us has an obligation to tread as lightly on the Earth as we can.

It has been said before that humans are the only species on Earth capable of protecting - to varying degrees - all the other species on Earth.

That is, in many ways, an awesome responsibility, so we are lucky to live in a place like Wagga that gives us such a big helping hand in doing the right thing.

We don't have to haul our garden waste or plastic bottles to some out-of-the-way recycling station. We simply have to drop the stuff in a bin and watch as it's collected from our homes.

It truly doesn't get much easier than that.

Greed might have been good for Wall Street's Gordon Gekko back in 1987, but in the 21^st century attitudes have changed. We cannot just take and use whatever we like and expect someone else to clean up after us.

Wagga City Council is one of just 88 Australian local government organisations involved in a scheme to turn its green waste into compost.

It's a good idea and one we should all be supporting.