HIRE-A-GARBO Melbourne Rubbish Removal

Bureaucrats are pushing for changes to Melbourne’s waste industry that are likely to have serious consequences for the community at large.

Some Background

Melbourne’s rubbish & waste infrastructure is reaching a critical point with several south and south east regional landfills facing closure within months of the writing of this article. This means that the waste industry, which services communities in these areas, will now need to use landfills in more remote locations.

The logistics of transporting waste to these remote locations results in higher costs, which are ultimately passed on to the consumer. Transporting waste over longer distances also has a negative impact on the environment due to noise and air pollution from heavy haulage and the inevitable debris lost from inadequately secured loads.

The effect of landfills moving to more remote areas has less impact on reputable rubbish removal companies that sort and recycle a large proportion of their waste streams. Such companies either sort the waste themselves or rely on third party transfer stations to sort and separate recyclable materials that are then transported to recycling facilities for further processing. To date, the transfer stations and recyclers have generally been located within a reasonable proximity of the communities and industries they service. This means that besides the environmental benefits of recycling, there are also strong commercial incentives to sort and recycle waste, as opposed to transporting it to more remote landfills.

Spanner in the Waste Works

Unfortunately, the City of Kingston, wherein the majority of the inner south/south east region's waste & recycling facilities are located, is determined to run the industry out of town by rezoning the area in which these facilities are currently located from a “Special Use Zone”, which permits such industries, to a “Green Wedge Zone”, which does not.

If the proposed zoning changes are made, and these transfer stations and recycling facilities are forced to relocate to more remote areas, there will be less commercial incentive for operators to spend the time and money sorting their waste, only to be hit with the additional costs of transporting it to distant locations.

Furthermore, if the proposed changes transpire, there will most likely be a corresponding increase in the amount of waste going to landfill, as well as an increase in the amount of rubbish being illegally dumped due to unsustainable increases in operating costs in an industry that already operates on tight margins.

Decision makers should be embracing the waste industry, which after all provide a valuable service to their communities, or we will all suffer the consequences of higher waste removal charges and a regression in environmentally friendly waste management practices.

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