Council to roll out wheelie bins for household waste collection

Released: Tuesday 26 November 2019

Council resolved today to introduce a 240 litre wheelie bin for recycling and a 120 litre wheelie bin for rubbish for its household waste collection service. It is anticipated that these will be introduced later in 2020.

“We received 546 submissions on this consultation,” said Kiri Diamond, Council’s Strategy and Engagement Manager. “Of these, 407 people wanted to change from bags to wheelie bins for rubbish. In addition, 68% of people wanted the larger (120 litre) wheelie bin for rubbish, so Council endorsed the majority view.”

In their submissions, people favoured option 2 (wheelie bins for rubbish and recycling) for several key reasons including minimising animal activity, safer and easier to handle, large families and convenience. Reasons against option 2 included the disadvantage to smaller families because costs are on rates not on users, rural residents not receiving a collection, more bins to handle and increase on rates.

Options 1 and 3 both retained the bags and these options were favoured by some because user pays, was a fairer split of costs, better for smaller families, cheaper if you produce minimal rubbish, encouraging recycling and bags suiting rural communities more. Those concerned about bags were primarily concerned about the continued use of plastic bags and the cost of the bags.

There was general support to introduce a wheelie bin for recycling (except glass) (464 submissions) as the larger receptacle would encourage recycling and keeping the crate(s) for glass only supported health and safety.

Submitters on the day raised a number of excellent points both in favour of and against the options regarding previous places they had lived in. Council will be taking some of these suggestions on board during its roll out.

While Council has endorsed wheelie bins for rubbish, it does acknowledge that this option means we need to support our community through significant behaviour change by education and enforcement regarding waste minimisation and contamination of recycling.

An extensive communication and engagement campaign will soon be launched in the lead up to the wheelie bin roll out, and beyond.

ENDS. Words: 340