MYTH BUSTER: Your new waste service

From 1 July, Northern Beaches residents will benefit from a new waste service, designed to keep costs down, reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and help protect our environment.

There seem to be a few misconceptions about the new service – here we debunk some of them for you.

The Northern Beaches has been serviced by two separate waste contracts and a council managed service relative to each former Council area. The expiration of these decades-old contracts gave Council an opportunity to consolidate and better negotiate one service for the entire area.

Thanks to economies of scale, we have a better service, better for the environment and one of the lowest waste charges in Sydney.

In fact we have been able to pass on savings to our ratepayers – most residents will pay less for their service in the 19/20 financial year.

Four in five Northern Beaches single dwelling households had 80 litre red bins – only a portion of the former Warringah Council area had the slightly larger 120l red bins. In standardising the service and to keep costs down, all residents now get a standard 80l service.

Residents who do go from a 120l to an 80l service will save $179 next financial year. Residents who need greater capacity can customise their service and order additional services.

Many residents will also see an increase in the size of their recycling bins. Residents are able to apply for additional recycling capacity with a second yellow or blue bin at $29/year.

The majority of our bin stock was ageing- more than two thirds were over 10 years old and many were more than 20 years old. Adhoc replacement and repair costs were escalating.

It saves ratepayers $1.2million to replace the old bins now because it gives our waste collection contractor certainty over the size and number of bins that need picking up every week. This makes repair and replacement more predictable which keeps costs down and under our new contract our contractor is responsible for the cost of maintenance and replacement. 

The old bins are being recycled- retrieved, crushed and pelletised, ready to be made into news bins.

Council will not be charging residents by individual waste amounts.

The purpose of the smart bin is to ensure that Council provides the required service to our residents eg. how many collections we are making across the area, whether any properties have missed their collections and also ensure bin replacements are well managed.

Around 230,000 old bins have now been sent for recycling. Bins collected months ago in Palm Beach have been reused to make the bins delivered to Allambie Heights.