Shellharbour residents call on council to increase red bin collection

Residents recently took to the Lake Times Facebook page in large numbers to air their frustrations about the fortnightly red bin collections – a measure introduced by Shellharbour City Council in response to rapidly expiring landfill.

“Barely a fortnight goes by without my bin being fly blown and crawling with maggots,” one resident, Tony Purdon, said.

“We have to take our rubbish to the tip or local garbages because we can’t fit it in the bin in the second week,” another resident, Unneka Guernier, said. 

Mother of five Michelle McColl said, “the bin is always full and to make matter worse we have two children in nappies. It fills up so quickly and it stinks.’’

Council maintain that since its introduction in July 2008, there has been “significant improvements” to the region’s waste management, and “less waste is going to landfill and more is being recycled”.

“This improvement places us closer to meeting the state government’s target of recovering 70 per cent of municipal waste by 2021/22,” a council spokesperson said.

However, with 17,893 families in the Shellharbour LGA and the average household having 2.7 people (ABS census 2011); some families are saying the fortnightly collection is just not enough. 

Albion Park mother of five Meredith Koning said even though they paid for an extra recycling bin, the red bin was overflowing every fortnight.

“We recycle whatever we possibly can, the yellow bins are always full,” she said.

“But we have a household of seven, five kids and two in nappies, and it’s frustrating because we either have to leave rubbish until the next collection or do a tip run.

“We can’t fit scraps in the freezer because we have food for seven people in there, and the idea of compost is not really that practical on a quarter acre block.”

While neighbouring councils Kiama and Wollongong use the weekly red bin system, Shellharbour council are taking the final steps in the redevelopment of the Dunmore Recycling and Waste Disposal Depot to include an organics processing facility and transfer station.

The move is intended to alleviate the build-up of food scraps in general waste bins by introducing weekly collections of green waste bins.

However, Mrs Koning said this would be of no help to their situation because nappies can not be recycled.

A council spokesperson said this measure was in line with council’s Waste Management Strategy. If council reverted  to weekly red bin collections the bill would fall on the ratepayer.

“Assuming 15 per cent of households choose to utilise the weekly services, (as was the case prior to July 2008) the amount of waste these households generate doubles and the annual waste management cost in 2014/15 would increase by $1.2 million,” the spokesperson said.

“This would result in [increased levies on]  those properties, estimated at $350 per household using the weekly service. It would also result in more than $460,000 in state government levy costs."

Once the depot development application is approved works will commence and are anticipated to come online July 2016.