Glenmore Park resident Suzi Tracey is fed up with overflowing bins and littered streets, and is demanding Penrith Council increase the frequency of garbage collection from fortnightly to weekly.
Ms Tracey began a change.org petition that received 3,500 signatures in just six days, and with summer creeping up fast, she believes there’s no time like the present to lobby Council.
“Our bins attract flies, maggots and birds who then rummage through the overflowing bins and drag rubbish onto the streets,” she said.
“This topic has been discussed online and also within our communities for some years now, and with the bin collection contract up for renewal in 2017, the time for us to band together for change is now.”
Ms Tracey’s red lid bins are collected on a Monday morning once every two weeks, and by then she said the 120 litre bin is overflowing.
“For families like mine who have children in nappies that are left sitting in a bin for two weeks before collection – along with other female sanitary items – it’s extremely unhygienic,” she said.
She said residents she has spoken to have often resorted to driving rubbish to work or the homes of friends and family.
Penrith Council provides waste services to around 70,000 households, and have been collecting red lid bins fortnightly since the introduction of the food and garden organics weekly bin collection in 2009.
“For the majority of households, when waste is sorted into recycling (yellow lid bin) and organic waste (green lid bin) there is hardly anything left that needs to go into the red lid bin. Hence, fortnightly collection of the red lid bin,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that using both the green and red lid bins stopped 32,800 tonnes of organic waste going to landfill, that would have cost Council $2.7 million in tipping charges.
“However, we recognise that some households may require a weekly service of the red bin. The extra fee is cost recovery only for the service,” he said.
The spokesperson said the whole waste collection system is cost recovery only, and its charge is separate to Council rates.
View the petition: www.change.org/p/penrith-council-weekly-red-bin-rubbish-collections.
