From Hilltops Council – Joanne Mackay

Waste - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle

I know it’s a bit of an interest of mine, as I have written about the circular economy in a previous column, but I think it’s timely to talk about waste. This comes following Council’s decision to increase fees and charges associated with our Waste Services.

I have received a number of enquires over the last week, mostly from residents asking for some justification on the increase of charges when they head to the tip.

Local governments play a critical role in waste management as they are responsible for implementing and enforcing policies and practices to ensure effective waste handling as well as developing innovative approaches to waste minimisation. As waste volumes grow, infrastructure and services need to keep pace. We need to ensure we have the capacity to meet our future needs and with this comes an increase in the costs to run and manage our tips.

Waste can cause enormous damage to our natural environment and threaten the health and wellbeing of our community if it is not properly managed. Littering, illegal dumping and mishandling of hazardous waste costs government millions of dollars each year.

The responsibility of managing our waste falls not only on Council but on all of us as individuals. We all have the capacity to reduce our waste but there is also a need to contribute to the costs associated with managing the waste we generate from a local perspective.

We are probably all familiar with ‘Bin Night’ or the weekend tip run as we hand over our accumulated rubbish to our local tip. Often the thought of that rubbish stops there. However, the journey of that rubbish has only just begun. Whether it is household rubbish, building waste or recycling, the future of our rubbish is not just complicated, it’s also costly.

Changes in relation to waste operations in Hilltops are aimed at achieving financial sustainability, as all the waste you drop off costs Council to process and/or transfer to another facility for recycling or landfill disposal.

There are many ways to reduce our waste, from limiting use of single use products, choosing minimal packaging, refusing to use plastic bags, repairing instead of replacing household items, giving away unwanted clothes, furniture etc, reusing takeaway containers and glass jars, using recycled building materials and composting your organic waste.

So, you can see waste is a costly and complicated problem and I think communication and education is needed to make more sense of it as Hilltops looks at improving our services and delivers an efficient and cost-effective process of managing our waste into the future.

“There is no such thing as ‘away’. When we throw anything away it has to go somewhere!” - Annie Leonard- The Story of Stuff (2007)

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• Local Council