Consideration of Options

The FRWA report focusses primarily on the logistics and costs of implementing fortnightly collections. (Open your copy from the document library) However, in order for councils to make an informed decision regarding the future of waste collections across the mainland FRWA region, it is necessary to compare the costs and benefits of fortnightly collections with the costs and benefits of other possible collection schedules.

The costs presented in the Discussion Paper only included the cost of collections and did not include costs for disposal, change management or subsidies. We are now paid for the recycled material collected and this means that recycling is now much more cost‐effective than landfilling. This will have an impact on the relative costs of the different options, as some options provide ratepayers with more opportunity or incentive to recycle than others.

Four options, consisting of ‘no change’, ‘fortnightly collections’ (as per the Pilot), ‘increased service’

(increased recycling and green waste collection) and ‘increased recycling service’ (increased

commingled recycling only), are costed and compared in Section 4 of this report. The cost projections

include estimates for disposal, education, administration and subsidies (where appropriate) as well

as collection to allow councils to make a fully informed decision.