City officers recommend ratepayers pay waste recycling fees to ease council financial strain
Gold Coast residents will in future have to pay fees to access tips if City bosses get their way, with a crunch vote looming at council chambers.
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Gold Coast residents could soon be paying to dump their rubbish at local tips – with council officers recommending gate fees are introduced.
Councillors will consider the recommendation with a crunch vote at a meeting on Tuesday amid warnings that the only other option will be to jack up general rates.
Officers are also recommending a number of cost-cutting measures, including the closure of smaller tips.
Councillors are believed to be split on the proposals, which will be presented to the Water, Waste and Energy Committee. The committee’s decision would then be debated at full council for a final vote on February 18.
A City report on the waste crisis does not specify what the tip fees might be.
However, Brisbane City charges gate fees of $17.40 for general waste and $14.60 for green waste. Tip gate fees at the Sunshine Coast and Ipswich City range from $15 to $18.
The fees apply to general waste — Recycle Street and green organics remain free.
The report says the Gold Coast’s waste network is “experiencing increasing strain” due to rising operational costs, a growing population and “stagnant resource recovery rates”.
Officers, aware the city is running out of space for landfill and facing continuing financial losses due to the state government’s waste levy, made the following recommendations:
* A residential access charge or gate fee for household general waste, construction and demolition waste.
* Closure of the Currumbin and Numinbah waste recycling centres (WRCs).
* Springbrook WRC to no longer take bulky waste and operate four days a week.
* The Merrimac green organics drop and go pad to not be replaced in June when it is needed for expansion of the neighbouring sewage treatment plant.
Council officers said a user pays system with gate fees was fairer than increasing a waste management utility charge in rates bills, which would be paid by residents whether they used the facilities or not.
They also believed a fee system would incentivise recycling, with research showing 53 per cent of recyclable materials are going to landfill.
Water, Waste and Energy Committee chair Shelley Curtis said costs are not the only issue council was grappling with.
“Certainly, money talks, but the financial implications are certainly not, in my opinion, the main driver for a need for change,” she said.
“The reality is we are running out of landfill. Even with all the money in the world, we can’t change the inevitability of that fact.
“We must be proactively looking at how we think about and manage our waste, now and into the future.
“Moreover, extensive community consultation has identified a clear mandate from the public to improve our current recycling rates, with 81 per cent or respondents indicating that paying less for recycling than landfill would encourage them to recycle more.”
Ms Curtis acknowledged the state’s waste levy was a “necessary lever” to encourage recycling. The Gold Coast’s population growth accelerated that need, she added.
“The report clearly identifies a friction between increasing waste management costs, and a lack of improvement in resource recovery through our WRCs,” she said.
“Gate fees are one potential mechanism – already used by many other councils – to incentivise recycling and waste avoidance behaviours, and so it is responsible for us to debate the merits and shortfalls of that option.”
The changes, if backed by councillors, would be introduced in 2025-26 with a communications program rolled out across seven months.
The state government introduced the waste levy in 2019 and since then the City has paid $101.8m in costs for disposing of waste at council landfill, offset by a subsidy program.
The City in September last year announced changing rubbish bin services for the first time in 25 years. About 857 collection zones would be reduced into 25 to improve efficiencies.
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Originally published as City officers recommend ratepayers pay waste recycling fees to ease council financial strain
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