A large family that produces too much rubbish for one general waste bin every week has been shut down by locals after claiming they “deserved” an additional bin.
The household in Townsville, Queensland, was quick to receive push-back after a member took to a local community group arguing “the council should give every home two red bins”.
“Because let’s face it, how many people every week struggle to fit their rubbish in the bin?” the man wrote in his post about him.
“Especially a bigger family! And why not? We are all taxpayers so I think we deserve it.”
Townsville City Council issues households a 240 liter waste and 240 liter recycling bin, with households given the option to pay for additional bins.
While it was unclear just how many family members occupied the home that claimed to need another bin, there were few people that supported their cause.
Of more than 300 people to respond, most encouraged the family to consider how they could reduce the volume of waste they produced before applying for another bin.
“I think if you’re filling more than one bin in a span of a week you definitely should be trying a lot harder to be more eco friendly and reduce you’re consumption of plastics,” one person wrote in a comment.
“You need to try and recycle more and buy less plastic and other wasteful items. More than happy to drop some print outs of what goes in each bin and tips on recycling and reducing your waste in your mailbox if you’d like,” someone else said.
Others offered up information on measures the family could adopt to reduce the amount of waste they needed to put in their general waste bin.
“As a household with three adults, we have found that knowing how to recycle, compost and collect soft plastics has eliminated almost all our household waste,” one wrote.
They added their red bin only went out for collection once a month with “a handful of items in it”.
“While I appreciate that different age groups may have different waste needs, there are strategies to cut down/out waste for these too,” they said.
Someone else pointed to how expensive and harmful landfill was, arguing “we all need to create less landfill and recover our waste better”.
“You can compost or worm farm your kitchen scraps and garden waste at home, and with a lot of packaging waste going into the yellow recycling bin there should be very little rubbish going into the red bin,” they wrote.
Massive cost of landfill
About 1500 Townsville households are currently partaking in a trial of the Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) bin program, which prevents organic matter from going into landfill.
The trial will continue until October 2022, after which it may be rolled out on a permanent basis, as is the case for 43 NSW councils and four suburbs in the ACT.
According to a Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts report, the cost of disposing of waste to putrescible landfill is estimated at between $42 and $102 per tonne of waste in urban areas and between $41 and $101 per tonne in rural areas.
A Canberra mum shared with news.com.au last year how she avoided putting her general waste bin out for collection for 40 weeks.
She revealed the subtle changes her family made that saved up to 5600 liters of waste from leaving their house and getting dumped in landfill.
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