Ten per cent of Coorong bins are being emptied for free – but not for much longer

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Hundreds of Coorong district residents are in for a nasty shock in the near future.

A recent review of the local council’s bin collection service found that more than 400 bins were being collected without their owners being charged.

Collecting and disposing of the extra waste cost the council and its ratepayers between $53,000 and $66,000 in the past 12 months alone.

For context, that’s about 8-10 per cent of the total cost of the council’s waste collection service.

At a meeting last week, Coorong councillors voted to recover the cost from the residents and businesses who have benefited from the slip-up.

“Whatever happened previously, (we) can’t … change,” Mayor Paul Simmons said at the meeting.

“Somewhere along the line, someone made arrangements – I don’t know when and what and why.

“What I want to do is go forward here with a proposal that will rein that in.”

The owners of properties with unregistered bins will receive a letter from the council in the next two months, asking them to pay a registration fee.

They will have until June 30, 2026 to pay.

If any property owners still have not paid the fee by that date, Solo Resource Recovery will create a list of holdouts and begin “selective non-collection” of their rubbish bins.

Of the bins which had not been registered, 226 were ordinary waste bins, 97 were green waste bins and 96 were recycling bins.

The council only realised how many phantom bins were out there after Solo took over the local rubbish collection service in 2022.

The company did not offer a breakdown of how many bins were in townships and how many were in rural areas.

Who will have to pay, and how much?

Waste collection fees in the Coorong district are set at $337 per year for 2024-25, with discounts for some rural property owners.

Council policy also stipulates that a fee should apply even for “council properties occupied by a third party”.

That could potentially include sports clubs, which have traditionally had their bins emptied for free.

However, Mr Simmonds suggested that clubs and other non-profit organisations might need to be treated differently, and that the council’s bin collection policy – last updated less than a year ago – might need to be revised again.

The policy didn’t say anything about bins on main streets, either, which he said were getting fuller and fuller as more visitors came to the district.

• More information: www.coorong.sa.gov.au.