Response to Today Tonight story – Tuesday, 9 April 2019. 16 April 2019
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The Shire of Serpentine Jarrahdale currently provides a two-bin waste service to our residents, one is for general waste and the other for co-mingled recycling.
The Today Tonight story compares two and three-bin councils, which produce very different results.
As the evidence suggests, the three-bin system far outperforms a two-bin system for the percentage of waste which is recycled.
The Shire’s waste data is collated by our waste collection contractor, Cleanaway.
This data is populated on an annual basis in the form of a census, which is sent to the WA Local Government Association (WALGA) and the Rivers Regional Council for public distribution.
Upon review of our 2017/18 recycling data, the Shire has found that some of the data collated is incorrect, or missing, which has therefore distorted the overall performance of the Shire’s recycling.
With this data corrected, the Shire’s recycling performance is 27 per cent and not the 22 per cent shown on the program.
The Shire collects over 10,000 tonnes per annum from over 10,500 households. From this, 2,500 tonnes is collected from the yellow top recycling bin. The Shire’s recovery rate for the recycling bin is 87 per cent on average, a seven per cent increase on last year’s reported figure.
Additionally, the Shire undertakes an annual hard waste collection, which produces over 200 tonnes of recyclable scrap metal. This data has not been reported, or taken into consideration, when evaluating our recycling efforts.
The Shire is currently undertaking a full review of its waste services and in line with the recent State Government strategy, is formulating its own Waste Strategy.