The move to four bins is going to happen, particularly given the Victorian Government has imposed it on councils by requiring delivery of the glass-only service by 2027.
Given its waste contracts are coming up for renewal, Greater Shepparton City Council has taken the decision to move sooner rather than later.
The purple-lidded bin for glass, collected once a month, will be in place no later than March 2024.
The change has been through extensive consultation, and thousands of submissions were made in response.
It wasn’t the glass bin that caused the most feedback; it was the plan to change the red general waste bin collection from weekly to fortnightly.
Some 86 per cent of respondents opposed the change, but council went ahead anyway.
Were councillors ignoring the ratepayers? Yes and no.
Sure, they went the opposite way, but with the ratepayers’ interests (and finances) at heart.
Part of the reason for the shift statewide is to increase the amount of waste being recycled, eliminate contamination that prevents waste being recycled, and reduce the amount of waste going directly to landfill.
There’s a carrot and stick approach too.
Landfill is enormously expensive to set up, and the levies applied are rising steeply to discourage dumping.
That won’t change.
So there are significant savings to be made by councils in avoiding dumping levies, and delaying the investment in developing new cells at landfill sites.
The way council has tackled the fourth bin is to focus on maximising recycling streams and minimising waste.
Fortnightly instead of weekly collection also produces a saving in collection costs and the volume of waste.
Mayor Shane Sali admits there are still questions to be answered.
It is why councillors rejected the first waste transition plan last November, and why they have asked for a full report on the strategy, implementation and education plans well ahead of the four-bin system being rolled out.
The way it is presented by council, the annual cost of a fourth bin will be just $1.85 once additional savings and costs are taken into account.
That seems a great deal for a system that is better for the environment, and less costly in the long run.
But there are issues, such as households with medical waste, nappies, or very large families.
There’s also the risk that people with the 80-litre red bin like me, who have to be diligent about recycling even with weekly collection, will get lazy when they have a bigger bin.
There are more than 10,000 small bin users and most will need a bigger bin to get through a fortnight.
There’s also the $58 bin upsize fee, and the additional annual cost (currently $72) that needs to be addressed.
At the moment, people who have already chosen a smaller bin and have been sending less to landfill for years face paying much more than $1.85 per year to make the transition.
Cr Sali said that was why there was an 18-month lead time — and councillors will be asking the same questions.