Tuesday 28 April 2009

A load of rubbish

It's been alleged that a large number of Cairns Council recycling trucks, are simply emptying their load, collected from the city's 80,000 yellow recycling bins, into the Bedminster rubbish tip, without any recycling being undertaken.

A reader sent this photo in yesterday, that he snapped on Comport Road around 11:30am.
"There were at least 5 or 6 Council recycling trucks lining up at the waste dock," Paul Taylor said. "You can see one of the trucks still there, just after emptying his load."
It appears, that all the recycling and sorting that local residents do, separating their paper, plastics and bottles, is of little avail, as most of it is going down the same chute as general waste. However, Council still advise local recycle collection dates, and recyclables can be dropped off free of charge.
I've put a question into Council, and will await their response today.
Cairns Council was very late to offer any form recycling, after most local authorises around the country had been doing it for years.
The subject was raised on yesterday's 4CA morning talkback, with one caller saying he has seen this practice happening over several weeks.

3 comments:

door bitch said...

There was definitely something going on at the tip yesterday. The stink enveloping Westcourt in the latter part of the afternoon and early evening was nauseating.

Lillian at Yorkeys said...

I recall some mention a few months ago from Council that due to the economic downturn, it was not going to be economically viable for some time for items to be sent down south for recycling - as there are no/few (?) recycling plants here in Cairns, & with petrol & transport costs it would be prohibitive.
Not that I like that one little bit. I spend quite a bit of effort (like many others) trying to do my best with recycling, & it is indeed a shame if all that's going to waste (literally).
It will be interesting to see what Council's response to this is. Cairns' has always (well, all the time I've lived here) been a recycling black hole - we really need to lift our game on this.

John, Kuranda said...

I live in a rainforest environment, have a yellow topped recycle bin; but the areas of the former Mareeba Shire Council do not have a recycling pickup. The rest of the TRC does though. Seems they tried it a few years ago but shelved it for the reasons Lillian mentions.

And that was in the good times!