Community & Business
27 September, 2024
Free green waste days are over
FREE green waste days at Mareeba Shire’s transfer stations have been cancelled and will be replaced by discount days instead.
Council approved the decision at a meeting last week in the wake of figures that reveal 16% of Mareeba Shire residents make use of the free green waste days which cost the council $140,000 a year to provide.
Instead of the free green waste days, residents will have the opportunity to dispose of their green waste for $5 per load, four weekends in the year, instead of the usual $10.
Mayor Angela Toppin said the decision was made during the budget process earlier this year.
“We found 84 % don’t use [free green waste days],” she said. “We would have to charge an additional $14 to all ratepayers to subsidise those 16% who use the service, and that’s not fair.”
The costs of free green waste included paying contractors to collect and mulch the waste, as well as staff wages at the transfer station and dealing with electric ants in waste. (In August, Kuranda recorded 2.60 tonnes of green waste from locations registered as being potentially contaminated with electric ants.)
Total green waste received during August, which included free green waste days, amounted to 237.43 tonnes of green waste.
Of that, 1.85 tonnes of mulch was sold and Shark Recycling removed 555.30 tonnes of processed green waste. Mareeba transfer station received 171 deliveries at 34.2 tonnes and Kuranda received 73 deliveries at 15.6 tonnes. Using the new fee, $11,200 could have been raised in the month.
Mayor Toppin acknowledged the new fee may impact illegal dumping, but “we’ll always have that problem in an area the size of ours”.
To counter it, council will be sending out fact sheets on what to do with green waste and holding free composting workshops to assist residents in managing green waste at home.
The council dismissed concerns that Kuranda residents may be disadvantaged given the faster-growing tropical vegetation in the area, as they tended to have larger blocks or acreages, and conducted more self-management on site.
The issue of illegal dumping was one of the key reasons former TRC Mayor Tom Gilmore introduced an annual fee of $130 to rates in around 2010, allowing residents to take waste to any transfer station as many times as they liked, for free. Loads of any kind of waste up to one square metre are without charge.
When Mareeba Shire was de-amalgamated from TRC, the new council did not continue the system, instead offering free green waste days throughout the year.
The new discounted waste days for Mareeba Shire will be trialled before and after the wet season to help with preparation and recovery.
The first discounted days will be in December at all transfer stations and the second are earmarked for April 2025.
