We’re conducting a review of our offshore waste services. This includes garbage, recycling, bulky goods and vegetation collection.

If you're a resident of our offshore communities, or if you use the public wharves in some way, we asked for your thoughts on the services and your ideas, big or small, for how they can be improved.

Key community engagement activities in August-September 2020 were telephone and online surveys, conducted by Micromex Research. We reached a good spread of people living in our offshore communities with 81 phone surveys and 219 online surveys completed.

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey. Your input will help us plan for the future.

Most respondents expressed satisfaction with the overall waste service, commenting on the friendly staff, the dependability of the service and that they were happy the service occurred offshore.

One consistent theme was the need for increased frequency of vegetation/green waste collection as well as an improved method of collection for green waste. Unauthorised use, bin size and pollution were also flagged as problematic for offshore community services.

There is still some consultation and negotiation needed before options can be fully developed and evaluated.

We are conducting further research and audits to ensure recommendations suit the local context, meet wharf-specific needs and take into consideration any infrastructure and/or contract changes that may also be required. This is an important phase of the project to ensure enduring improvements to the service can be implemented.

A consultation report will be made available before the final recommendations are presented back to Council.

In the meantime, we have been making some improvements:

• We are ensuring planned wharf upgrades include better design to manage waste and litter.
  • This includes design of the bin house, ramps and pontoons on Carol’s and Bells wharves at Scotland Island and the planned upgrade to Mackerel Beach Wharf.
• We have also responded to concerns about illegal and unauthorised use of bins on wharves by erecting informative signage about the use of the bins.
• We have continued to work with our contractors to improve the waste transfer operations at Church Point Cargo wharf.

We are also working on other initiatives which we expect will bring an improved waste service to the community and facilitate the development of options for the offshore communities once completed.