Perth Voice Interactive

THE vexed verge junk issue has cropped up again with some councils considering reverting to the old yearly bulk collection. 

Back in 2014 Stirling council cancelled its yearly “bring out your dead” junk collection because the piles of trash were making the streets unsightly, especially when weather or scavengers strew the rubbish about; non-residents driving through and adding their garbage at the first sign of an object on the verge also added to the mess.

Sometimes unexpected surges in junk meant the pickup process took longer, while recyclables weren’t extracted so everything went to landfill.

As a result the annual verge collection was replaced with an on-call skip bin service.

But some, particularly treasure hunters, yearn for the days of bulk verge collections. Subiaco council recently reverted to the annual bulk pickup, and there’s now been an attempt to bring it back for a trial in a stretch of Stirling.

Stirling councillor Michael Dudek says some members of the community have complained the book-a-bin system is limited by a short timeframe, a lack of availability to book a bin, and the bins being too small for a household’s yearly bulk rubbish or large objects. 

Cr Dudek moved a notice of motion at the August 1 meeting calling for a “one-off bulk verge collection trial within the suburbs of Balga, Mirrabooka, Nollamara and Westminster”, just to see how it goes for a year so the council can decide whether to renew the on-demand skip bins when the deal expires in 2024.

His motion got 7 votes to 6, a narrow defeat since he needed an absolute majority, so the skip bin system stays for at least another year.

Subiaco council’s switch back to bulk collection also wasn’t painless: Its councilors spent an hour and a half debating the move, eventually voting to go back to bi-annual bulk pickups as soon as they could find a contractor.

Subi’s currently finishing up an 18-month trial with the ‘Verge Valet’ service, where residents can just dump their junk straight on the bare verge and book a pickup. But about 66 per cent of surveyed residents wanted to go back to the old mass pickups.

A chief complaint about the Verge Valet service was that a lot of rubbish was left on the verge for lengthy periods with no indication of whether a valet was coming to pick it up, or if it was just someone flytipping. 

Subi councillor Rosemarie De Vries, who led the charge to bring back the bulk tradition, said “one person’s waste is another person’s treasure, and we should allow treasures to continue to be recycled and shared within the community through the bulk waste collection”.

by DAVID BELL