Banyule Council now collecting rubbish bins fortnightly

A council in Melbourne’s north east is the latest to dump weekly rubbish bin collections and not everyone is happy with the move.

Banyule Council is now collecting residents’ red-lid rubbish bins fortnightly.

Banyule is the latest Melbourne council to dump weekly rubbish bin collections in a bid to reduce waste.

The council in Melbourne’s north east, covering the suburbs of Ivanhoe, Heidelberg and Macleod, is now collecting residents’ red-lid rubbish bins fortnightly, and picking up a green-lid FOGO (food organics and garden organics) bin each week.

Monash Council also recently switched to fortnightly rubbish bin collections, and Knox will move to the system next year.

But the controversial move has been slammed by many Knox and Monash residents, with fears bins will be stinky, with nappies, dog poo and medical waste forced to sit in bins for two weeks.

A Banyule Council spokesperson said to support a circular economy, the state government has mandated that all households have access to a food and garden organics service provided by council.

“Nearly 50 per cent of items in rubbish bins were found to be either food waste or garden organics,” the spokesperson said.

“Food and garden waste that is sent to landfill generates methane – a greenhouse gas around twenty ones times worse than carbon dioxide.

“Introducing a FOGO service allows this material to be diverted from landfill and turned into high quality compost.”

The spokesperson said the council surveyed residents about the FOGO service as part of preparing the Towards Zero Waste Management Plan 2019-2023.

But there have been a number of negative comments about the plan on the Banyule Council Facebook page, including residents asking for a reduction of rates in exchange for a reduction in rubbish collections.

“We don’t have much rubbish but it needs to be collected every week to prevent rats, ants, possums and the smell. So my rubbish now goes into a public bin!” Brett said, while Sheldon said: “Quite frankly this is rubbish! You have three key responsibilities Banyule City Council: roads, rates and rubbish … all part of our rates charges.”

But the council spokesperson said the service has been running for six weeks and so far the uptake has been very positive.

“Banyule provides a special needs waste services to households on a demonstrated need basis, including larger families and those with medical needs. We ask that these individual households contact council, so that we can understand their unique needs.”

Banyule has also been running cloth nappy workshops for parents and carers for a number of years as disposable nappies account for a large amount of landfill and also runs a lot of education to help people reduce the waste that they produce.

“We need to work together to reduce waste,” the spokesperson said.

Ratepayers Victoria president Dean Hurlston said the group remained deeply disappointed in councils like Banyule making these unilateral decisions without community consultation.

“Councils complain that they cannot afford to cut rates because it will jeopardise services, yet they remove weekly rubbish without any reduction to the ratepayer, how is that fair?” he said.

“We all understand landfill is becoming more expensive but instead of councils managing their costs and being more efficient, they just cut services and then tell residents to essentially “suck it up”.”