By Alesha Capone
The number of kerbside bin collections missed in Wyndham has more than doubled across 12 months.
The council’s annual report, released last week, showed that for every 10,000 garbage and recycling bin collections scheduled in Wyndham in the 2020/21 financial year, 9.86 per cent were missed.
This compares to 4.49 per cent of collections being missed in the previous financial year.
The report said the number of missed collections increased due to a new kerbside waste collection services contract that the council awarded to Cleanaway Pty Ltd in December last year.
“This can be contributed to new routes, change to collection times and driver errors,” the document said.
The report also said there had been multiple service requests from residents for missed and damaged bins.
The council’s director of city operations, Stephen Thorpe, said that it took “several collection cycles for Cleanaway to train their staff and refine their routes to collect bins on time”.
“The new contractor also had new trucks,” Mr Thorpe said.
“During the initial few months of the contract, it was found that the lifting mechanism on the trucks needed adjustment.
“Once these adjustments were made, the number of damaged bins decreased significantly.”
Mr Thorpe said that since, January, there has been a 75 per cent decrease in the number of missed bins.
“More than 99 per cent of bins are collected on time and we are working hard to get that as close to 100 per cent as possible,” he said.
“Each week, contractors collect about 200,000 general waste, recycling and green waste bins across Wyndham.”
“We continue to work with our contractors to ensure bins are collected on time and damage to bins is avoided.”
A Cleanaway spokesperson said: “Cleanaway’s kerbside waste collection services in Wyndham city are running well following the resolution of some initial issues.
“We remain committed to providing Wyndham residents with safe and reliable collections of general garbage, recycling and green waste.
“We are continuously working on improvements in our route planning and management to ensure bins continue to be collected on time.”
Under its 10-year contract with the Wyndham council, Cleanaway services about 100,000 residences in the municipality.
The spokesperson said that Cleanaway invested about $10 million in more than 25 new trucks, and created more than 40 jobs, many of them for Wyndham residents, to provide these services.
“We have also supported Wyndham city council with education resources to improve recycling and reduce contamination of recycling and green waste bins, thereby reducing waste send to landfill,” they said.
