Hobsons Bay introduces four bins, fortnightly landfill collection

However, a Yarra City Council report said the fortnightly collection of rubbish for landfill “appears to present particular concerns from those with young children in nappies and apprehension about the potential additional negative impact of hot weather”.

Hobsons Bay mayor Colleen Gates said most of the feedback about the four bins – which will be introduced on February 1 – had been positive. She had received only two queries about nappies.

“We are working on a solution for that,” Cr Gates said.

“We have looked at the number of residents who have children in that age range and it’s estimated to be around 3500 families.”

Under the new Hobsons Bay model, a purple-lidded bin for glass will be collected every four weeks, a light-green-lidded bin for food and organic waste will be collected weekly, the yellow-lidded bin for other recyclables will continue to be collected fortnightly and landfill collection will change to a fortnightly pick-up.

Cr Gates said glass shattered in commingled bins and contaminated other recycling streams so it made sense to collect it separately.

She said there was no need for a weekly landfill collection for most households if the “stinky stuff” – meat offcuts and rotting vegetables – were placed in the light-green lidded bins, which would be picked up every week for compost.

The council says introducing food and organic waste bins will reduce the amount of waste in the average household rubbish bin, which goes to landfill, by 42 per cent.

Hobsons Bay was one of the councils forced to send recycling to landfill following the collapse of Victorian recycler SKM in June.

It was revealed SKM had been stockpiling materials for about two years after China effectively banned the export of our waste.

The China crackdown exposed that Victoria has little ability at present to recycle and the industry was more about simply exporting our waste to Asia rather than reusing it.

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In 2018 the state government’s Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group recommended collecting food and organics every week and rubbish for landfill every fortnight.

Premier Daniel Andrews responded by branding fortnightly garbage collection “a rubbish idea”.

However, Nillumbik Shire, north-east of Melbourne, has been doing it for more than a decade.

Cr Peter Clarke said the shire was about to move to a more bespoke service, where people with larger families, for example, could opt to buy bigger bins.

“I think over time we will probably also move to a system of pulling glass out of recycling,” he said.

However, the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association does not support separate glass bins and would prefer to see Victoria introduce a container deposit scheme.

CEO Gayle Sloan said container deposit schemes were funded by the beverage industry and not the household and were not an impost on local councils.

Meanwhile, Yarra Council will decide in February on whether to roll out four bins across the municipality.

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“The current Victorian kerbside recycling system is broken,” a council report says. “Two thirds of councils that had a recycling processing contract with SKM are still taking their kerbside recycling material to landfill.”

The council report said “without a sweeping reform of the kerbside recycling industry, all councils face the risk of having to landfill kerbside recycling materials”.

Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly said he was concerned four bins would be less likely to be supported if the council tried to save costs by opting for fortnightly landfill bin collection.

Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said the logistics of waste collection was a matter for councils.

“We’re working with them to deliver recycling reforms and we’ll have more to say in the coming weeks,” she said.