TAMWORTH residents are starting a push to increase council’s recycling collection to a weekly service.
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Locals have taken to social media to call on Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) to bring in a weekly recycling pick-up.
However, council said it is locked into a contract with its kerbside collection provider until 2019.
A recent poll on a Tamworth Facebook group has stirred up a debate about local recycling needs, however, an ongoing poll shows the overwhelming majority in favour of weekly collections.
More than 800 people have taken the poll with in excess of 700 in favour of both waste and recycling being collected weekly.
Linda Cork created the poll and saw a few different sides of the argument.
“If I miss a bin night, it might be backed up for a week,” Miss Cork said.
Miss Cork said it was good to see so many passionate about recycling and said she would leave the poll open for a few more weeks to get a more comprehensive response.
“That’s only a small percentage of the Tamworth population,” she said of the response to date.
While she said it was only a minority of the region’s population, the vast majority of respondents were in favour of the idea, leading a number of people to deduce a potential rise in cost to deliver additional recycling pick-ups.
A number of comments on the poll acknowledged there could be a cost to the change, but Miss Cork said it would be “harsh to penalise people for doing the right thing”.
“It would be interesting to know how much it costs to bury rubbish as opposed to the cost of recycling,” she said.
TRC was recently awarded a $585,000 state government grant to expand green waste collection to incorporate food waste, due to start from June 30, 2017.
TRC senior waste management officer Matt Hollis said council’s fortnightly recycling collection was a part of a contract that runs until July 2019, but flagged reconsidering the schedule after then.
“Prior to Council entering the next kerbside waste collection contract, we will conduct an extensive community consultation program to best consider the community’s expectations around the waste collection services going forward,” Mr Hollis said.
The senior council manager said residents could request an additional yellow-lidded bin at an additional yearly cost of $110.
“Where residents have a volume of recycling greater than one bin, Challenge Recycling has a series of large crates available at the Forest Road Waste Management Facility where residents can deliver and dispose of separated recyclables, free of charge.”