From April next year, general waste will be collected fortnightly instead of weekly, albeit in a slightly larger bin, while collection of green waste, including food waste, will be weekly. 

New father Austin Gregor said his general waste bin was already almost full every week with nappies and baby wipes.

“I think it’s a good thing for food scraps to go into green waste, but it’s a bit rough to expect people to hang onto their garbage for another week,” Mr Gregor said.

“My son’s only six weeks old, but he goes through four to six nappies every day, plus there’s the baby wipes that aren’t recyclable. We can fill that bin in one week and we’re on the ball with recycling everything we can.”

The changes were a result of a 2015 council survey, sent to every home in the local government area, that drew about 4500 responses. 

Sixty-six per cent of people did not support the change to fortnightly general waste collection, but 62 per cent of people were in favour of switching to a “food organics and garden organics” (FOGO) system, according to a report presented to council in September, 2015.

However, environmentalist Ros Prangnell said they would be a good thing for Wagga, but conceded public education would be needed.

“We’ve got to stop putting so many things in landfill,” Ms Prangnell said.

“A high percentage of what is thrown out now could go into compost and it will take a little while to adjust, but I feel it’s really important we do this to reduce landfill.”

Council commercial operations manager Caroline Angel remained steadfast that the changes were driven by the survey, but when pressed on the changes to fortnightly general waste collection, she suggested people needed to change the way they used that bin.

“We have done a considerable amount of research and we are not the first to undertake this, there is evidence there is no additional smell than if it were collected weekly,” Ms Angel said.

“It’s also about how you prepare the materials you’re putting into the bin. We encourage people to make sure that they try to not leave their bins out in direct sunlight, ensure you fold your nappies up, you may be able to empty them before you put them into the bin, but that’s all part of the education process we’ll be rolling out in the future.”

According to council, a “Community Nappy Trial” conducted by Lake Macquarie City Council showed that the odour of bins containing nappies at the end of a fortnight was no worse than regular bins at the end of a week, regardless of the number of nappies.