Wollongong City Council is trialing a new approach to its annual household clean up service, giving residents the opportunity to ring and book a kerbside rubbish pick-up at a time that’s convenient to them.
Currently Wollongong residents have one chance each year to put bulky household items on the kerbside and Council’s contractors collect it suburb by suburb.
Dr Col Gellatly AO, said the current system means that for a period of about a month, entire Wollongong suburbs are littered with people’s household rubbish items, from broken furniture and electrical items to unwanted carpet scraps and garden hoses.
“While residents have indicated they appreciate the option of having these types of household items collected by Council rather than visiting to the tip, the system leaves parts of the city looking very unsightly,” Dr Gellatly said.
“Because Council advertises which suburb it’s going to pick up next, we have also had a problem with people travelling to other suburbs to drop their household waste on the kerbside. Coupled with this, people who come along looking for useful goods often create a bit of mess searching through rubbish on people’s kerbside.”
“For the next seven months, Council will replace the annual household clean up with a new on call kerbside clean up service, which allows residents to book a collection when they need it,” Administrator Gellatly said.
“We will offer each resident one booking per year and they will be allowed to have up to two cubic metres of household rubbish collected (2 metres in length, 1 metre wide and 1 metre in height). This is double the volume allowed in the current service.”
“The new trial service will allow residents to place more types of items on the kerbside for collection, including mattresses, computers, televisions, tyres, furniture, clothing and other electrical items. We will then manually sort the items to increase the amount of material recovered for reuse and recycling,” Dr Gellatly added.
If you live in a house all you have to do to book is call Council on 4227 7111 or visit the Clean Up Page for an online booking form available from 1 December.
If you live in a unit complex, you will need to liaise with your Body Corporate, Managing Agent or Department of Housing Officer who will contact Council and arrange a pick up.
The new service will begin on 1 December, and will be trailed for seven months. Throughout the trial Council encourages you to provide your feedback via phone, writing, or by filling out a survey on our website.
The cost of the trial is being covered by Council. Over the next seven months we will track usage and real costs of the service, and depending on the outcome, we will put a funding proposal for consideration as part of next year’s Management Plan and Budget.