‘The house smells like a toilet’: Sydney suburb hit by stench, recycling plant told to clean up its act

A mystery odour waking residents in the middle of the night in parts of Sydney’s west for weeks has been traced back to a waste facility, which was ordered to fix the source of the smell immediately.

Locals in Minchinbury, about 40 kilometres west of the CBD, said the “really bad” stench arrived in March.

“We’d be wetting towels to stop the smell coming in,” resident Zara Tai said on Friday. “There was no escape. You just go to sleep and hope you stay asleep. I’d go to bed and think, ‘This is insane.’ ”

The NSW Environment Protection Authority has issued a clean-up notice to Bingo Eastern Creek Recycling Ecology Park (& Landfill) after receiving more than 240 odour reports from residents, with a spike in community complaints since April 1.