Shellharbour City Council is supporting clever disposal of food waste with new “kitchen caddies” being delivered to homes.
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But with a forced merger with Wollongong on the cards and set to be announced next week, the caddy could soon become a souvenir artefact from a defunct council.
The Mike Baird Shellharbour Council Memorial Compost Caddy.
Council’s move combines environmental education with the core duties of roads, rubbish and rates, in a program called Food Organics, Garden Organics (FOGO). Green waste collection, including the caddy, will be ramped up to weekly, and will deliver to a new organics facility, yet to be built.
But FOGO or not FOGO, that is the question.
If the merger goes ahead – and the NSW Government is showing no signs of listening to the people of Shellharbour and Wollongong – the process would start in July.
Caddy collection could soon cease, leaving residents with a rubbish bucket reminder of the Baird Government’s incineration of their local council.
The new merged entity would have two classes of garbage clients – the Memorial Caddy haves and have-nots – defined by whether they live north or south of the Windang Bridge.
It would raise questions about when rubbish would be collected, and the caddy doesn’t make it any easier.
Would merged residents of Shellharbour continue to have their rubbish collected only fortnightly, as is (incredibly) the case today?
Would the residents of the former Wollongong Council continue to have their rubbish collected weekly?
It’s hard to imagine Wollongong bureaucrats shelling out for compost caddy collection in Shellharbour alone. And the cost of collecting caddies weekly from Helensburgh to Shell Cove would cause conniptions for the beancounters.
Wollongong residents (incredibly) pay $386 a year on top of rates for waste collection, so it’s unlikely they would want to pay more for weekly caddy collection.
Many Shellharbour residents however are fed up with fortnightly rubbish pickup, and would like to be brought into the 21st century.
In that case, FOGO could stand for ‘Fraid of Garbage Overload. Or, with forced mergers looming, Fear of Government Overlords.
With a new keepsake caddy there as a reminder.
