By CASEY NEILL
GREATER Dandenong’s new Waste and Litter Strategy has “one glaring failing”, according to councillor Matthew Kirwan.
He told the 14 September council meeting that it failed to address the issue of illegally dumped rubbish plaguing streets in central Dandenong and Noble Park.
“After my conversations with officers I am not convinced that this plan will make a significant dent in this problem,” he said.
“It hasn’t improved and has the prospect of getting worse.
“Much of this is concentrated in central Dandenong and Noble Park where the underlying reason – waste management in multi-unit developments – will only get worse as these areas continue to densify in population.
“I cannot see how anything other than patrolling the main hotspots and picking up rubbish is not part of the answer.”
The draft 2015-’20 Waste and Litter Strategy will be released for community consultation for 28 days during October.
Cr Peter Brown said trash was strewn across Dingley, Cheltenham and Mentone ahead of the area’s annual hard rubbish collection on 21 September.
He said it highlighted that the council adopting a ‘call and collect’ method was the right choice.
But in public question time, Springvale South resident Dora Aspinall asked for a return to an annual collection because the streets were constantly littered with rubbish.
Cr John Kelly applauded the report and said it looked at new technologies to divert waste from landfill.
He said last year’s Great Bin Swap was “one of the best decisions council’s ever made” and urged other metropolitan councils to align their bin lid colours to enable widespread education campaigns.
The Waste and Litter Strategy addresses waste minimisation, management and education, litter prevention and management and recycling.
Goals include reducing waste sent to landfill, delivering sustainable waste, increasing community awareness, creating clean and litter-free public places and increasing material recovered for re-use and recycling.
Action plans to achieve the goals will be reviewed annually.
Councillors at the 14 September meeting also agreed to send the council’s infrastructure services manager to the International Waste and Landfill Symposium conference.
There’ll be more than 500 presentations at the event in Sardinia, Italy, from Sunday 4 to Friday 9 October.
The council report said leading scientists, administrators and practitioners presented state-of-the-art concepts, strategies and technologies.
It said the event was known for innovation and that all new ideas and approaches applied worldwide in the past two decades were debated and reviewed during workshop sessions in the symposia.
