Mayor’s hard waste worry

“Make no mistake — a hard waste collection will … put enormous stress on our landfill.” GEELONG MAYOR BRUCE HARWOOD

A NEW hard waste collection would place “enormous pressure” on Geelong’s landfill capacity, Mayor Bruce Harwood has warned.

While there has been a sharper public focus on recycling, council statistics show the amount of kerbside waste that was kept from landfill dropped slightly over the past three years.

A new $3.1 million organics composting facility, which opened in Anakie last week, should see some improvement in the current diversion rate of 54.75 per cent.

The council facility aims to avoid dumping 35,000 tonnes of collected garden waste each year by turning it into compost.

But Cr Harwood has warned that another initiative, the at-call hard waste service, would present some challenges.

“Make no mistake — a hard waste collection will bring all and sundry out from different parts of the community, especially initially, and that will put enormous stress on our landfill,” he told a council meeting.

“We need to have a good strategy and be prepared for that.”

The hard waste service is being trialled for 12 months from April 2019.

Costing $3 million annually, the program would offer households one booked hard waste collection a year.

Windermere councillor Anthony Aitken said he was encouraged by some of the council's recent decisions in the waste sector, but was “disappointed” by its recycling record.

“Over a five-year period, we’ve actually made no impact in terms of the amount of waste, as a percentage, that has actually been kept from landfill,” Cr Aitken said.

The sheer cost of processing waste and managing rubbish tips provided “a massive financial responsibility for the council”, he said.

More than $5 million was spent on rehabilitating the long-closed Corio landfill in 2017-18, and $9.5 million on the Drysdale centre.

Cr Aitken said an additional $3.4 million was spent sending Geelong waste to the Wyndham tip.

“It shows you what impact landfill is actually making in the longer-term financial sense,” he said.

Geelong’s waste diversion rate is very similar to the Surf Coast Shire’s, which has hovered around 55 per cent since 2015.

However, the Surf Coast council is optimistic that its introduction of a food and garden organic program this financial year will have a strong impact in 2019-20.

“It is anticipated a minimum of a 20 per cent increase in waste diverted from landfill will be achieved,” a council report said.

Cr Harwood said the City of Greater Geelong was looking at a food organics program as it investigated a range of options to reduce its reliance on landfill.