Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has conceded Brisbane’s bin collection rates are not good enough, and he’s promised to take action against the contractor.
On Tuesday, Schrinner was grilled in the chamber by the Labor opposition about reports of rubbish not being collected from homes in Wavell Heights, Acacia Ridge, Deagon, Camp Hill and Wynnum.
“I’m not going to play politics with the basic service mate,” he responded.
“It’s a fundamental responsibility of local government to make sure we deal with waste, and that we give people value for money for services that they’re paying for, and I’ll be very clear – I am not happy with the performance of the contractor in recent times.”
In 2017 Suez – since renamed Veolia as part of a merger – was awarded a 16-year contract by Brisbane City Council to manage waste for its 1.36 million residents. It was valued at about $900 million.
Schrinner said about 1 per cent of bins were going uncollected, but the council had been pushing the contractor to reduce that figure.
“I’m not happy, and we are taking every action possible within the realm of the contract to make sure that our performance improves,” he said.
“We should be striving towards every bin being collected in the city every week, as we would expect that to occur, so I am not going to make excuses.”
Opposition Leader Jared Cassidy said that from February 2022 to 2025, there was an increase of more than 220 per cent in missed red bins alone.
“We are eight years into a 16-year contract. He [Schrinner] was either totally ignorant about this trend, or he didn’t care until it came up in the press. Either way, he has totally dropped the ball on an essential council responsibility,” he said.
The comments came as Schrinner’s office announced a panel of five local operators to manage green-waste processing over the next 20 years.
“Every tonne of green waste recycled means less waste going into landfill and more nutrient-rich compost to put back into community spaces across south-east Queensland,” he said in a statement.
The new panel arrangement will begin on July 1, with SOILCO, Remondis, Wildfire Energy, NuGrow and Candy Soil announced as the operators.
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