My response to Councillor Craig Wickham

Dear Craig,

Thanks for your reply, I do appreciate it. I must admit I was getting ready to write to all the councillors who did not reply. Only Mayor Jayne Bates and Councillor Bec Davis replied before the matter went to council. I was hoping to canvas councillors' personal opinions before the matter was discussed in council.

I will be following up with this, because the technology is there to implement my ideas. There is no reason to use such an antiquated and counter productive charging method. The reason given for not implementing a user pays method was the scanning equipment not being able to cope with the corrugated roads. That to me is an excuse. They are ways of damping vibrations from corrugations, if the will is there.

The benefits to council and the community should outweigh the initial establishment cost. It is not necessary to always go for the lowest common denominator. If best practice can be implemented and be financially advantageous, it should not be rejected. Apparently the hardware and software for actually weighing and recording waste from individual households is around US$20,000 per truck. Should be cheaper for just counting bins.

At the field day Daniel indicated our waste management is costing $1.2 million per year. I don't know how many trucks Solo are using here, but a capital cost of just A$30,000 to improve a $1.2 million per year operation sounds like a good deal: $1.23 million next year, followed by $1.1 million the next? Not unreasonable.

As I mentioned in my email, by encouraging Islanders to reduce, reuse, recycle, there should be less stops for the Solo driver each week, less freight leaving the island, lower mainland disposal fees and hence lower costs across the board. It might not even be necessary to raise the overall cost to most residents. The savings from reduced waste generation might be sufficient to cover the fairer charging method.

I accept I am probably very much in the minority, with most households probably putting out 50 to 100 bins per year, and who are quite happy to have those like me subsidising their cheap per-bin charges.

Kind regards from Mal

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