For many years Tasmania’s Clarence City Council, has run an annual clean up – a kerbside pick up of household rubbish including large items, such as fridges and old mattresses.
The clean up was designed to assist the high proportion of elderly residents in Clarence and others for whom it was difficult or impossible to move large items to the landfill.
Clarence City Council recognised that the Clean Up, while a valuable service to residents, could be replaced by an innovative solution, which better reflected modern waste management practices.
The new ‘Dial-A-Garbo’ concept, where residents who wanted to participate in the collection were asked to ring Council and make a booking, saved $10,000 of ratepayers’ money in its first year. The saving was one third of the cost of the old annual clean up system.
There are no missed collections. All the rubbish is collected on the right day with no over runs. The concept is a first for Tasmania.
“The new system has proved very popular with residents and is well supported,” said Mayor Cathy Edwards.“Under the old scheme the trucks were required to pass every household whether they had anything to be picked up or not. Savings result from drivers plotting out a collection course and recycling as much as possible.”
Last year, Dial-A-Garbo collected 116 tonnes of waste from 1,584 properties. Items that could be repaired, reused or sold through Council’s waste transfer station were separated.
As a result, a large proportion of the waste is diverted from landfill.
Clarence City Council’s new Dial-A-Garbo collection has significantly cut operating costs while still providing a full service to all residents who wish to use it.
Almost all participating households had presented their rubbish at the kerbside according to Council’s guidelines, making the collection smooth and time efficient.
A low cost, user friendly brochure explaining how to use the service was letterbox dropped to all households.Council set up a mini call centre to take bookings, answer questions about what was suitable for collection, and issue receipt numbers to track any possible missed collections.
For further information contact Gary Richardson, telephone (03) 6245 8644.
