The head of Wagga’s ratepayer’s group has warned of a stink over proposed changes to garbage collection that will affect every home in the area.
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Under the proposal, general waste will be collected fortnightly instead of weekly, while collection of green waste would be weekly.
However, ratepayers in a newly-expanded garbage collection area, including Uranquinty, Kapooka, Cartwrights Hill and Springvale, will likely see the introduction of an annual $303 waste collection charge.
The contract for household garbage collection was put to tender by Wagga City Council on Monday, following an community engagement campaign that drew more than 4500 responses from the community.
One of the biggest changes will be in food waste, with the introduction of a small kitchen bin for compostable food waste that would go into a repurposed green waste bin. The “food organics and garden organics” (FOGO) bin will be collected weekly and processed as compost.
Wagga Ratepayers Community leader Wes Fang said switching to more sustainable dumping was a good thing for the city, but he questioned the wisdom of collecting general waste fortnightly.
“There was a debacle in western Sydney when a similar scheme was introduced because of things like dirty nappies,” Mr Fang said.
“A child can go through four or five nappies a day, so you’d have about 35 filling the bin each week and in summer that would create an awful smell. I don’t know how they’ll address that.”
However, council commercial operations manager Caroline Angel said food organics was largely responsible for odour from household rubbish.
“An audit of Wagga bins in 2011 demonstrated that 60 per cent of bin weight was made up of food organics… which will be picked up weekly,” Ms Angel said.
“Twenty-seven councils in NSW have already adopted a FOGO system with another five set to implement in the coming year.”
Council’s acting general manager, Robert Knight, said the changes were a step towards efficient, cost effective and environmentally sustainable waste collection.
“By keeping food organics out of landfill not only are we reducing our impact on the environment, we are minimising the need for new and expensive waste cells and future-proofing against potential waste levies that may be introduced,” Mr Knight said.
“I’m confident the tenders will be highly competitive and deliver value for money for Wagga’s ratepayers.”