Is This Green Spin With A Sting?

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The Launceston Council has approved the introduction of a voluntary food and garden organics fortnightly collection service for the urban residential area of Launceston and Lilydale. ................. Residents who sign up to the service will receive a third, 240-litre wheelie bin for a one-off registration fee of $65. The motion was moved by Alderman Janie Finlay, who said it was an item which had been before council for some time and council had had some great conversation about it. “I think through those conversation we have got to an improved position,” she said.................. “I think this is a fantastic complementary service to the waste management that we already offer at the kerbside. With the consultation that occurred, the number of people that have indicated that they will participate is a wonderful indication of the success [it will have].” .................Alderman Danny Gibson said it was important to promote that the new bin will be optional, and resident do not have to sign up. ................. “I think this adds further weight to the great things we are doing holistically to reduce the amount of waste going into landfill,” he said. ................. The cost of landfill was one of the biggest surprise for Alderman Soward when he joined council, and he agreed it was exciting to be doing something to reduce landfill. ................. I think this is a fantastic complementary service to the waste management that we already offer at the kerbside.- Alderman Janie Finlay ................. It is expected the bins will help divert 32 per cent of City of Launceston waste to landfill. Alderman Soward also highlighted the importance of residents receiving a standard size bin. ................. “It might sound like a small thing, but it means that we are the same and that we don’t have someone who ends up with a Rolls Royce bin and someone who ends up with a clapped-out bin… and I can imagine it would make it difficult for collection,” he said. ................. Residents who opt in for a new bin will receive a registration pack which includes a kitchen caddy and educational material. 

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Ratepayers who have been around for a while might well smell a rat here but they need to be very careful of being accused of criticising motherhood. On the face of it this initiative ticks some of the 'high moral ground boxes'.

Yet here we are again growing the 'bureaucratic empire' and using ratepayers conscripted funds to do so. Launceston already has a private enterprise green waste processor and it will now have to compete with ‘the council’. SO, what’s so very wrong with that? But they're not offering this servicer. Has anyone, alderman or bureaucrat, engaged with this proprietor?

Consider this, if ratepayers setting out to build a business could conscript their capital requirements, and once they had the cash in their hands, have to pay no interest or tax, they’d probably think that they’d died and gone to heaven. Or they might well think that they were somewhere like the Cayman Islands and sipping champers at breakfast.

If this is not unfair competition demonstrate it aldermen! Some of the aldermen around the table have been here before in the service of the operational component of council’s aspirations to grow the pie. It's a process where the ratepayers typically loose!

But this 'Green Waste Scheme' is a voluntary scheme! Yes, but that’s only to do with buying the bins etc. The composting plant has yet to be purchased it seems and nobody is saying just what that plant and equipment is going to cost. To be fair no one is asking it seems – and probably not even the aldermen.

Have the aldermen seen the business plan?  Anyway, why not work with a private enterprise service provider?  Why not smooth the way towards win-win outcomes? Why not buy your bins a Bunnings?  Why not think again?

There’re are enormous opportunities here and ratepayers need to be given the chance to reap the dividends rather grow their investment in  a cash hungry cost centre that is headed towards demanding more and more cash from ratepayers. When is 'the community' going to be included in the loop in order that some of the follies of the past are not repeated.

Here is ‘the marketing video’ [click here] and see if you can spot the ‘spin and the sting’. This looks a lot like an unfolding story!