Household Waste Survey 2016

Our waste management team is developing a Waste Strategy and our community engagement team was asked to gain feedback from the community on a range of waste related issues. This feedback was obtained by conducting focus groups and an online survey.

Objectives

The overall objective of this engagement activity was to attain community perceptions on a number of waste-related areas, including:
  • Potential service changes
  • Service collection times
  • Illegal dumping
  • Problem wastes
  • Littering
  • Public place recycling
  • Satisfaction with current service

Results

  • 1,643 residents completed the survey

Satisfaction

  • Participants were asked how satisfied they were with Council waste services overall. In total, 72% of participants were satisfied (58% satisfied and 15% very satisfied), 13% neither and 14% were dissatisfied (2% very dissatisfied and 12% dissatisfied). The mean score of 3.7 out of five indicates that, on balance, participants were satisfied with the waste services Council provides.

Recycling

  • The survey aimed to identify barriers participants face whilst recycling with the yellow-lid bin in their home.
    • The most common response was that nothing makes it difficult and they actively recycle (57%).
    • The challenges identified were that the recycling bin is often full before collection day (29%) and knowing what can and can't be recycled (18%).

Future Service

  • Waste services identified an opportunity to decrease landfill by collecting food waste in the green-lid bin currently used for garden waste and plant cuttings. Participants were supportive of the change over all with 41% very supportive and 29% supportive (mean score 3.8 out of 5).
  • If the kerbside green-lid bin were to collect food waste, there would need to be service changes. Participants were given four options to select from.
    • The most preferred option was option four with almost half of respondents (47%) ranking this option as their number one preference. This option would see Council convert the current green-lid bin into a food and garden waste bin (FOGO), which would be collected weekly, alongside the existing 140L red-lid general waste bin and fortnightly collection for the yellow-lid recycling bin.

Where to from here?

The survey results will assist in the development of the Waste Strategy. The results presented above are the survey results received from the participants, no decisions have been made at this stage what the service changes will be, if any.

Full Report

Household Waste Survey Results 2016 (pdf)
Summary document (pdf)

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