Cut to bin collections causing a big resident stink

Residents paying councils tens of millions of dollars in rates are having their garbage bins collection cut from once a week to once a fortnight.

Taxpayers are paying councils tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of having their garbage bins collected once every fortnight.

Councils are getting $46m in grants to implement food and garden organics recycling services, resulting in some councils cutting red lid garbage bin collections from weekly to fortnightly.

Inner West Council is the latest to take up the new service, receiving almost $1 million in taxpayer funding to help roll out benchtop bins for food waste and organic bin bags for every household.

Residents will now have to put their food scraps into the benchtop bin and then empty it into their larger green bin for collection, while red bins will be collected on a fortnightly basis.

Fourteen other councils are set to make the move to introduce expanded green waste services, with all councils required to do so by 2030 by the NSW government.

Tony and Deborah Davies, from Camperdown. Picture: Justin Lloyd

The move has triggered outrage from residents, including former Inner West Council deputy mayor Victor Macri, who questioned why the council wouldn’t drop its waste levy if garbage collections were being halved.

“The council is going to reduce their costs, so is that going to be passed on to the rate payers?” he said.

Laura De Groot and her daughter, Karli, 2, from Camperdown. Picture: Justin Lloyd

“They’re halving the service effectively — so does that mean it’s going to be half the cost of the levy? They want to do less and get the same waste levy — how’s that work?”

Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne defended the move.

“The change to food recycling will be a challenge and we are here to support local people to adjust. Residents will be able to book an additional red bin collection when they need it and have a new larger red bin for free,” he said.

“The NSW government has mandated that all councils introduce food recycling and we are sticking to their guidelines for how to roll it out.”

“Food recycling already exists across all of regional NSW as well as much of Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra.”

It’s understood Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Grayndler electorate office hasn’t received any correspondence or contact from constituents regarding Inner West Council’s decision.

In Camperdown’s back lanes, residents are shocked about the council’s decision to cut red bin collections down to once a fortnight.

Local mum Laura De Groot, 32, said “it’s annoying because we fill up our bin every week”.

“With kids you make lots of rubbish, it will be pretty gross especially in summer with the heat with nappies and waiting two weeks for it to be emptied.”

“I have two dogs as well so it’s going to be rank,” she said.

Behind the rows of houses, bins line the back lanes and often overflow with trash, despite the fact residents are supposed to bring the bins inside.

Camperdown couple Deborah and Tony Davies, 61 and 63, said with the current state of the collection the fortnightly switch is “not a good idea at all.”

“We prefer weekly, as we’ve always had weekly (collections),” Mr Davies said.

“There are sanitary napkins, baby disposables. Coming into summer any sort of foodstuff will go into this so-called new bin but the red bin will get filled up fairly quickly and probably sit in a lane for that extra week and start to smell and stink,” he said.

Mrs Davies suggested the decision is an excuse for the council to cut costs, as the “rates have gone up, but they are cutting (services)”.

Further down the street Wei Hran Young, 62, was gobsmacked by the news, and said her suburb was already struggling with the current collection schedule.

“Are you kidding me? Honestly, these bins get filled up on the third day after they have been picked up, does that mean we are going to have rubbish all over the streets?” she asked.

As summer approaches, Mrs Young said the smell from the rubbish is already bad enough, and that she hadn’t heard about the decision until now.

“I think once a week is the least they can do,” Mrs Young said, “I never heard anything, I never got anything in my letterbox”.