Inner West Council residents up in arms about climate saving cuts to bin collection

A furious backlash has been building in Sydney’s inner-city suburbs over cuts to garbage services and bringing in new food scrap bins, with residents saying it’s been a “debacle” that’s hit families hard.

Residents of the Inner West are complaining about changes to their bin service, which halved the frequency of red bins and introduced compost bins, to combat climate change. They say it's lead to overflowing bins and a health hazard. Picture: Supplied

Residents are furiously slamming the Inner West Council after it halved the collection of regular waste bins amid the introduction of new “climate saving” food scrap bins, describing the rollout as “fiasco” and complaining families are forced to store dirty nappies in freezers.

The council introduced new benchtop food scrap bins last month and at the same time cut the weekly collection of its general waste red bins to fortnightly, claiming that “expanding food recycling to every home is the single biggest thing our community can do to combat climate change”.

But unhappy residents have flooded the council and social media with complaints about garbage spilling over in local streets, triggering maggots, flies and rats, and told councillors to forget woke politics and get the basics right.

However Mayor Darcy Byrne says the measure was the “single biggest thing households can do to reduce emissions”, and that hiccups in the initial rollout are being ironed out with strong support from many residents for the new system.

The rollout has also been beset by mishaps including inaccurate timetables, missed collections and insufficient new bins, as well as council-branded garbage trucks caught mixing all the waste together.

Full general waste garbage bins in Leichhardt. Picture Rohan Kelly.

Mr Byrne said 40 per cent of a general waste red bin are food scraps and his council was simply following guidelines from the Environmental Protection Authority, which have already been adopted at Penrith and Randwick councils. In Penrith residents can pay a higher annual fee for a weekly red bin pickup.

Mr Byrne also said residents had the option of moving to a bigger 240 litre general waste red bin - as well as requesting an extra collection in the off-week and the council was simply following EPA guidelines in making the changes. Some residents said they were unable to book the extra services for several weeks.

Full garbage bins, overloaded with rubbish on Hill and Balmain road in Leichhardt. The changes to collection have meant bins are always full. Picture Rohan Kelly.

“We are not being ideological,” he said. “We have already saved 700 tonnes of food waste converted into compost, it is much higher than we expected. Residents are getting the same number of collections. I’m not going to pretend it’s worked perfectly and we said all along it would be a challenge - but the phone calls to council have more than halved.”

An incident filmed last month at Ashfield of an Inner West Council branded garbage truck mixing recycling and general waste together - which sparked condemnation online - was now being investigated, Mr Byrne said, with an official warning sent to the external contractors Cleanaway.

“That was a one-off,” he said.

Many residents in suburbs as diverse as Balmain to Newtown argued that food scraps were a tiny portion of their rubbish and some already had their own home garden composts and could not fit a larger bin.

Leichhardt. Many residents have overflowing bins. Picture: Supplied

Local resident Diane Kessikidis complained to her community group that there were “people putting dirty nappies on their freezer FFS, because they can’t keep them in the bin for 2 weeks due to smell and they have resorted to that!

“This is by far the dumbest change this council has tried to carry out and it’s an instant failure before it even gets off the ground.”

Some complained that Mayor Byrne was “far too worried about US politics and climate alarmism nonsense to care about local resident’s health” and the rollout has been a “debacle”.

Social media post complaining about the reduced general waste bin services in the Inner West Council.

“Ours are sitting and festering up nicely. I am hoping the council will do a free bin cleaning service as we now deal with maggots.”

Many families complained that the system penalised families, while one mum complained that when she rang the council she was “put through the third degree” on how she recycles and quizzed about her food scraps.

“Who has food scraps with three growing children and especially the cost of food these days and I have a worm farm.”

After Greens councillors posted about how much CO2 would be saved another resident accused them of “gaslighting us when it’s obvious that things are not working out”. Others complained about the hygiene of keeping sanitary products, dog poo and baby nappies for two weeks in bins.

Residents of the Inner West are complaining about changes to their bin service, which halved the frequency of red bins and introduced compost bins, to combat climate change. Picture: Supplied

Resident Daniel Ribarovski, who ran as an independent at last council elections on a platform of getting the focus back on services, not meddling in international politics, said while he supported reducing landfill, he failed to see how these measures would do much.

“It’s very clear that Inner West Council is more interested in state and federal politics (particularly those benefiting the ALP) than administering basic council services,” he said.

“I recently attended a citizenship ceremony where Mayor Byrne used his address to our new Australians to give a totally unrelated story about PM Albanese before lecturing them on the merits of the Voice.

Greens Councillor, Marghanita da Cruz, told complaining residents that the “hope is to make the red bin as smaller and smaller - we are running out of landfill sites”.