SA council’s plan to charge for hard rubbish clean-ups

The Mount Barker and Adelaide Hills councils in South Australia are each looking into the option of charging per collection.

Mount Barker District Council doesn’t offer hard rubbish collection but is discussing introducing the service after residents voiced their desire for one.

According to last week’s meeting agenda, the council’s preferred option to service the demand is to charge ratepayers up to $140 per collection.

If approved, those deemed to be disadvantaged, including concession card holders – which makes up about 20 per cent of the council area – will have a subsidised fee of up to $110.

The Adelaide Hills Council has also proposed to charge $43 per at-call collection, plus $23 per mattress collection.

It currently allows its ratepayers one free “at call” hard waste collection per financial year.

The move to charge for hard rubbish collections is under community consultation for both councils.

Mount Barker Council general manager infrastructure Phil Burton said he anticipated the community would largely support the user pays collection.

“(The service) ensures there is high resource recovery, or diversion of waste from landfill and equity for all ratepayers regardless of whether they choose to use the service or not,” he said.

“Other councils that do not charge for hard waste collection have built the cost of the service into their general rates.

“Our council has chosen not to increase rates to pay for this new service.”

Mr Burton said the council preferred the hard waste collection option because it would be available to all residential properties; it complemented existing services, and provided social and community benefits, including local employment.

Adelaide Hills Council acting chief executive Peter Bice said the demand for the hard waste service significantly increased in recent years, jumping from 1100 collections in 2017-18 to 1568 in 2019-20, with a similar figure expected for this financial year.

Mattress collections are also predicted to reach up to 700 in 2020-21 compared with 237 in 2018-19.

Mr Bice said it was difficult to gauge what response would be received but said ratepayers were “passionate” about sustainability and reducing waste to landfill.

“Residents who don’t use the hard waste service won’t be subsidising those that do through general rate payments – so the proposal may be attractive to them,” he said.

“Conversely, those residents that do use the hard waste service may have to make an additional contribution to the costs and therefore may not be supportive of this approach.”