I have a problem which I suspect probably affects most people living in NSW. It's a combination of the smell that these bin scavengers create and the rubbish they leave behind, and the health risks they pose to the general public.
Ever since the introduction of the 10c refund in NSW, there has been an increase in rubbish that is dumped around my house. Often I clean up my area but my neighbours are either too busy or have just given up and when there is a storm the rubbish just gets blown around. At first I thought it was due to people not using bags because of the bag fee, but people are still using bags from what I can see just sitting on my front verandah as people are carrying their waste to the red household bin. I thought I would see more people carrying their bins directly and dumping them into the red bin, but I almost never see this because frankly the plastic bag problem hasn't really gone away, it's just another hidden tax that was enforced onto people. I receive a good 20-30 bags a week from my local stores…
Another increase I've seen is people getting sick in my area since these scavengers usually open bins and generally have this weird odor that no other person generates. How do I put it, they smell worse than a homeless person and you can bet yourself that the sudden rise in communicable diseases is due to these people walking around spreading it to your children… They don't collect from the yellow recycling bin, they collect from the red bin and also the council waste bins you see outside in the streets… When I'm sitting on my verandah and I can hear a trolley of clinking bottles, then I know to get back inside, otherwise once they come past the house they usually park their trolley outside and then go scavenging for bottles in an area. That trolley smells putrid!
Maybe the council could introduce some fines that ensure the bottles collected must stay within 5 meters of the person, this would allow the bottles to keep on moving, and possibly discourage some scavengers from holding large quantities since the smell would have to travel with them. Sometimes I'm lucky and the trolley isn't parked outside my house, but then my neighbour a few houses away is unlucky enough to have to smell the odour for that good 20 minutes whilst the person is running around looking through bins of the street. Either way, I suspect if the bottles stay with the person, then they would not be collecting them, and obviously the bottles are being kept away from themselves as they know it smells. I'm talking a large woolworths style trolley filled with a 240L household bin style bag which I suspect is the Armada brand.
To make it harder for the ordinary folk to get fined, the council could either have fines for people caught with large amounts of unsanitary bottles more than 5 meters unattended because genuinely I'm not too fussed with the low volume scavengers leaving their mini trolley outside my house, sure they smell but you can't smell them from your verandah… The ones that collect a large quantity have this kind of putrid smell that no words can describe. If you are collecting the bottles yourself to return they are unlikely to develop this putrid smell because they haven't been placed into the red bin… Frankly, it's a good policy they should use to generate revenue from scumbag scavengers.
These scavengers effectively transfer wealth from the average taxpayer/council to their own pockets, depriving the council of revenue and increasing the burden on your council rates. Remember that recycling companies generally pay the council for the amount of cans/bottles collected in the yellow bin.
I believe the council should look into ways of introducing fines for these types of public nuisances, but no one is willing to do the hard work to get it enforced. Surely there is some part of some health regulation that can be used.
What do you guys think we should do about these scavengers? Should we exempt small scale scavengers or should we hit them all just as hard?
Also: Are there still scavengers in wealthy suburbs? Is moving to another suburb actually a solution?
No they dont. The more a council collects, the more it costs. They are reducing the cost to council and anyone who is not returning bottles is throwing away 10c for every item. They obviosuly dont care about the 10c.
Dont think so. The recycling companies are paid to collect recyclables and then they earn income from whatever they sell, thats how they make money. Doesnt come back to the council.
You're talking out your butt. That isn't happening.