BIN collection rates will remain stable until the end of the financial year, but ratepayers will have to absorb increases in the cost of recycling from July.
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Orange City Council resolved on Tuesday night to re-negotiate its waste contract with JR Richards and Sons by up to $60 a tonne following China’s decision earlier this year not to accept waste it believed was contaminated.
JR Richards had been taking recyclables to Sydney contractor VISY, which will now charge an extra $60 a tonne allowing it to investigate new ways of processing waste while continuing to accept the material.
Deputy mayor Joanne McRae said residents could rest easy for another two months.
“But it’s a requirement under the Local Government Act that it has to be user-pays,” she said.
Cr McRae said the final cost to ratepayers would be calculated once negotiations were complete, in time for the 2018-19 financial year.
An application will also be made for access to the state government’s $75 a tonne relief package to meet the extra cost.
Cr McRae said she was surprised to find out Orange’s recyclables had previously been sent to China.
“We can’t expect another country to take our waste take take a ‘not in our backyard’ approach and extra cost usually creates an opportunity for someone to develop technological innovations to make something else out of it,” she said.
She did not think Orange’s residents would approve of Ipswich’s decision to send all waste to landfill.
“I don’t think residents would accept that,” she said.
“Personally I don’t think the hard work ratepayers put in should be going down the drain.”
Mayor Reg Kidd said residents could continue to use their yellow recycling bins with confidence, but he also pointed out only 18 per cent of the $660 million collected from the waste levy in NSW was returned to councils.
“One way forward is to ensure that the levies collected are fully reinvested to support recycling,” he said.
“Amongst the coverage of this crisis it’s been very interesting to see how much of the technology already exists which could prevent almost all waste going to landfill and now is the time to invest in the infrastructure to make that happen.”
He said there council be opportunities for Orange to expand its waste methods.