By KATH GANNAWAY
A WARBURTON family has called for a community conversation around hard rubbish collection in Yarra Ranges after their daughter’s new bike was ‘picked’ by an out-of-town picker.
Tex Lindner and Lindy Schneider’s daughter Hannah left her bike unattended at the front gate of their house on Saturday, 25 January and returned to find it gone.
Ms Schneider said the bike was 10 metres from the hard-rubbish pile, and was very obviously a new bike.
The bike has since been retrieved after Warburton Police contacted a trader who had put the bike up for sale on Ebay.
The incident highlighted a trend which Ms Schneider said they had previously joked about as the ‘Festival of Hard Rubbish’, but which has turned out to be an evolving nightmare for many local residents – an influx of professional hard-rubbishers who pick the most lucrative items from the stacks and potentially threaten the viability of the council-run program.
“I am all for recycling and minimising waste through repurposing and I understand many people in our community score little treasures from hard rubbish. But what I have especially noticed this year is that there is a ‘professional’ element,” she said.
She said the feedback from others had added to their concern with one woman being abused when she questioned a person collecting whitegoods and others saying they were awoken by someone with a trailer going through the hard rubbish at 12.30am.
There have also been anecdotal reports of accidents caused by people stopping suddenly to check out piles, and items coming off trailers as pickers make their way back down the line.
Mr Lindner said there was confusion about whether it was illegal to remove items, and said other issues such as the timing of the collection during the peak of the tourist season, and the bushfire season, were all issues that would benefit from a discussion on what has for many people in the Yarra Valley become a local institution.
There was no apology from the bike picker who claimed on the popular ‘Hard Rubbish Melbourne’ site that the bike was on the rubbish pile.
Yarra Ranges Council urged residents to make sure any items they did not intend for hard rubbish were left well away from hard rubbish left on nature strips.
Council’s Director Environment and Engineering, Mark Varmalis, said however it was not illegal for anyone to pick – for personal use, or for gain.
“During the consultation period for the new draft general provisions local law, a majority of public submissions did not support the inclusion of a clause prohibiting people from removing items from hard rubbish collections,” he said.
“As a result, this clause was not included in the final version of the local law.”
He said however, while council supported the community’s views around the ability to re-use someone else’s unwanted items, it did not support the practice of people taking material from hard rubbish collections for profit.
“In the case of the girl whose bike was taken, we are happy to hear that the police were successful in finding the bike and returning it to her,” Mr Varmalis said.
What do Mail readers think about the hard rubbish collection? Does it warrant a re-think? What alternatives are there? Is it fair to pick the best and leave the rest? Let us know your views – and your hard rubbish experiences – good and bad! Post on facebook.com/mailnewspapergroup, email editorial@yvnews.com.au , or write to The Editor, PO Box 470, Healesville. 3777.
