Glen Innes Severn Council has announced that it will defer considerations to implement a third waste bin to the regular collection cycle as collection contracts go to tender.
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For the past six years, waste collection in the local government area has been contracted to Cleanaway Transpacific, but after recent tendering the services has been allotted to JR Richards and Sons Waste Management.
“JR Richards used to provide the service in Glen Innes a number of years ago back in the Municipal Council days, the council of the day decided that they would do it with day-labour, with council employees,” development, regulatory and sustainability services director Graham Price said this week.
“We went out to contract and Cleanaway have been doing it for the past six years and now Richards have come in with a very competitive quote which will result in some savings passed on to the ratepayers.”
As part of the submission process, Mr Price said council investigated the possibility of implementing a third ‘compost and green waste’ bin to the regular collection cycle.
“We were not satisfied that the technology is good enough to provide a low cost solution to that problem,” Mr Price said.
“It had to be cost effective. There is no point doubling the garbage charge on the ratepayers to implement another bin.”
Mr Price said it is likely that Glen Innes will eventually implement a third bin the future, but for now, council was not confident that the immediate implementation would be a cost effective benefit.
“We have to develop a cost effective composting system and then we have to have an end sale for your product. You can’t just have it piling up at the landfill,” he said.
Mr Price noted that the compost bin has been implemented in a number of regional and coastal communities, but said council will be deferring investigations until 2017.
“We will do it as some future stage, but it is all about the processing and the end product that you produce,” he said.
“At the moment we are watching very closely what Armidale Dumaresq are doing, so we have ruled it out until the next council elections when it will be revisited.
“We are not confident that the technology is good enough. We are not confident that we can get an end product that we might develop and we are not confident that we can manage any contamination at this point in time.”
For now, Glen Innes will continue with a two-bin waste collection system, with Mr Price encouraging residents to correctly separate their recycling and putrescines into the appropriate bins.
