On Tuesday night, Cr Hamling asked for Orange City Council to write to Premier Gladys Berejiklian for a second Return and Earn container deposit site. 

He visited the drop-off point at the North Orange Shopping Centre car park with one of his sons on Sunday to find one of the plastic bottle points full and unavailable. 

“We waited 20 minutes and it was freezing,” he said. 

He said on a previous occasion, the ticketing system malfunctioned during adverse weather.

“It faces Mount Canobolas and that’s where all our weather comes from,” he said. 

Cr Hamling’s sons are aged 14, 12 and 10 and he said they enjoyed dropping off containers for pocket money.

“Parents will get sick of waiting,” he said.

“We’re being told to recycle, but they need to give us the means. 

“Every other regional centre has at least two and we’ve got one, I just want to know why Orange is missing out.”

He believed a second reverse vending machine (RVM) would take the pressure off the existing site.

A NSW Environmental Protection Authority spokeswoman said TOMRA Cleanaway was actively working to find an additional site for Orange and the RVM was cleaned and emptied twice a day.

The spokeswoman said the community could report machine issues by calling 1800 290 691 and the myTOMRA app provided real-time updates for every machine in NSW to tell users whether their machine was open, almost full, temporarily unavailable or in sleep mode. 

“This will also assist members of the community to plan their trip in unfavourable weather conditions,” she said.

She said TOMRA was investigating technical issues arising from inclement weather.