Weekly bins or not? Decision this month

A report on general rubbish collection in Baw Baw Shire will be prepared in response to a petition tabled at last week's council meeting.
An investigation into the cost and contractual considerations, service impacts and options of returning to a weekly red bin collection will be included in the report to be presented at the September council meeting, following a notice of motion put forward by Cr Danny Goss.
The petition, which called on council to reinstate weekly general waste collections, garnered more than 6100 signatures, with 3997 of those being residents of Baw Baw Shire.
Lead petitioner Liz Shaw addressed councillors last week. "The petition is not in opposition to FOGO, recycling or our responsibility to the environment. It is about the hygienic management and storage of contaminated waste."
"Amongst the petitioners are families with babies and toddlers in nappies, people living with incontinence, carers of elderly and disabled family members, women and girls using sanitary products, households disposing of pet waste and people living with medical conditions.
"These community members are now required to store waste that can be contaminated by faeces, urine, blood or animal waste for up to 14 days.
"This is a sanitation issue," she said.
Ms Shaw questioned if an assessment about storing contaminated waste had been undertaken and if a fortnightly collection was safe and appropriate.
Cr Goss said it was the largest petition council had received and the community concerns were not something council could ignore.
He said the requested report would give councillors the information they needed to make an informed decision on the issue.
"We shouldn't be making big decisions without the information in front of us. Also, the public have a right to know as well," he said.
"For example, I don't have information on the cost of the rollout, I don't have information about the contamination in the green waste that's been going on."
Cr Ben Lucas said rubbish was a significant issue and a service council provided to the community. "For them not to realise the frequency has changed until their bin just doesn't get picked up...that isn't good enough. We haven't communicated that well enough at all."
Cr Paul Pratt said the issue came down to transparency and understanding the choices made.
"Our residents deserve to know what it costs for every single delivery service we do.
"If it's this frequency, and it costs this - we need to know, and at the minute we haven't been given that information well, and we haven't communicated it well to the community.
"We need this information to actually make informed decisions that represent what the community wants, but also for what the community understands their choices mean from a cost perspective, for the whole community as well. Because we can make choices, but with choices come costs or cost savings, which is really important," Cr Pratt said.
Cr Adam Sheehan said he would like to understand what evidence there was about sanitation issues and how other councils who'd rolled out the service were navigating issues.