Council to move weekly rubbish collections to fortnightly in city’s leafy eastern suburbs
A Melbourne eastern suburbs council will introduce a new weekly service to collect food and garden waste but residents may not be so happy when they learn what’s happening to the regular rubbish collection.
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Residents of Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs are the next ratepayers to be faced with fortnightly rubbish collections instead of weekly.
The City of Boroondara, which includes Camberwell, Hawthorn and Balwyn, will phase in the change from May under an overhaul of its waste system.
Households will get a new weekly food and garden waste collection in a bid to slash the amount of rubbish going into landfill.
But the normal weekly rubbish collection will go to fortnightly — a move already adopted or being considered by some other councils.
The Herald Sun revealed last week that Hobsons Bay Council, in the inner west, suffered a backlash from some residents complaining about overflowing bins due to fortnightly collections.
Altona North’s Paul Barker said he was in favour of improved recycling processes but said the fortnightly rubbish collection had already posed problems.
“The only place we can store our bins is right outside our front door under our bedroom windows. We’ve noticed the smell, especially after a hot day, it’s not pleasant,” he said.
Yarra Council, which includes Richmond and Collingwood, last week voted for fortnightly rubbish collections as part of a four-bin system that will see food organics and glass recycled.
The move to collect food waste weekly but move to fortnightly rubbish collection was recommended by state agency the Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group in 2018.
At the time Premier Daniel Andrews and then opposition leader Matthew Guy criticised fortnightly collections, citing problems with smelly items like nappies mouldering in bins.
Daniel Wild, from free market think tank Institute of Public Affairs, said councils risked harming the environment.
“The basic duties of councils are to fix the roads, reduce rates cut red tape and collect the rubbish,” he said.
But Boroondara mayor Cr Cynthia Watson said residents backed the new system because half of the stuff put in general rubbish bins was food or garden waste.
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“We have to be smarter about how we manage our waste and limit the pollution we cause,” she said.
“The best way to do this is to stop putting food waste into the general waste bins, which is ultimately sent to landfill.”
The council will give households a free kitchen caddy bin to store food scraps such as fish, meat, raw bones, bread, dairy, vegetables and fruit.
That will then be emptied into a special organics bin, and later processed into soil conditioning products for use in agriculture and horticulture.