A - Z of Australia - R is for Rubbish Removal

In some of the countries I have lived in, rubbish collection was done either weekly (in Braunschweig, Germany) or daily (in Johannesburg, South Africa), the latter involving a lot of council workers picking up bags from the pavement and throwing them into a truck driving ahead of them.

In Australia rubbish collection is a one-man show! Or one man and his truck, more precisely.

Every suburb has a designated collection day, but in my suburb, I put out my bin on the verge on Monday, and early Tuesday morning the truck comes, stops next to the bin, grabs it with some "claws" and drops the rubbish into the container, then puts the bin back on the verge. After collection you just bring the bins into your property.

In our council and in most of the cities I know, there are two bins -in Perth, one is a bin with a green lid for normal household rubbish, lawn clippings and small prunings and a yellow lidded bin for stuff that is recyclable - paper, glass, tins and cans, plastic (even plastic bags), although these recyclables should not be put in plastic bags. 

The yellow and green lidded bins awaiting collection

The truck picking up the bins

The green bin (normal rubbish) is collected once a week and the yellow bin (recycle) is collected fortnightly, on the same day as the green bin, with two different trucks doing the job.

Construction or building materials, soil or hazardous materials are not allowed in the bins and must be discarded at the  local Recycling facility (information about their location available from your Council or their website).
The council has a list of items that can be recycled and how to dispose of items that they do not collect, like construction material, etc.

Picking a recycling bin with the "claws"

Twice a year (in my council), we have a Green verge collection and a Hard Waste verge collection.
I find this service, which is of course provided through the property rates you pay your council, is to me one of the best services the council provides.

The hard waste comprises old furniture, white goods, televisions (these were out en masse lately due to a change from analogue to digital tv in recent months), general household junk.
Again, no construction material, motor vehicle parts or flammable liquids are allowed.

The council provides a map, (online as well) with zone maps and date schedule for each suburb within the council. You are allowed to put out the waste two weeks before collection begins.

They claim to remove up to 1 standard trailer load of hard waste from each property, but I have seen some houses with so much rubbish, they must have certainly thrown out the whole house!!

* When people start putting their stuff out on the verge, you can see a few people driving by with their small trucks, and they stop to examine the piles of stuff and sometimes pick a few things to take with them. I once saw an orange lounge suite being taken away, and then a couple of days later I went to the "flea market" and there it was for sale. "Money for nothing"!
Some things are actually quite good, and can just be renovated with a lick of paint or varnish.
A few years ago I saw 2 pretty round cane chairs a couple of houses from mine. They had nothing wrong with them apart from lack of varnish. So at night I went to get them, one by one, and after sanding and varnishing them, bought foam to make the pillows and they are still in use in my backyard!

Household rubbish, furniture awaiting collection

With the Green Waste verge collection, only tree prunings no longer than 1.5 metres, leaves, etc, but nothing inside bags. In this instance, two trailer loads will be removed from each property. 

These prunings are used to make mulch, which the council then sells back to us to put on our gardens in summer.

Green verge collection - a tractor picks tree trunks to put into the rubbish truck

Of course the cost of these services are built in the house and land taxes you pay your local Council, but I think we are being provided a very good and efficient service, and the cities are left clean and tidy.

How is the Rubbish collection done in your country?