*** TIP FEES and the WASTE UTILITY Charge ***
A local community page published a query lately about tip fees and the cost of waste in the city, after the Bulletin published a few articles discussing the waste business operated by council, on account of a recent Council meeting debating the issues.
In summary though, nothing has particularly changed as a result of decisions at Council, at least for another 12 months, and the matter has been referred to the Special Budget Committee meeting over the coming months.
But here's a summary of the latest news;
The Council is required to operate their waste business in a cost neutral fashion. That is, the cost to operate the waste business, and plan for the future, must only be funded by revenue generated by specific fees and charges related to waste.
There's a couple of key fees Council charges to derive revenue;
the Waste Utility Charge
tip fees for commercial operators
kerbside bin fees
(there's a few other sources, but those are the ones most relevant to every day residents)
In the table below, you can see how our council waste costs compare to other nearby councils.
The costs for the waste business include landfill operational costs (holes in the ground we bury general waste in), resource recovery costs (green and recyclable processing costs), bin collection services, other logistics costs (trucks and stuff) and environmental charges. There's other costs, but that's a reasonable overview.
There's also a levy imposed by the state government that is based on the tonnes of rubbish we bury in the ground. Put simply, with increasing waste and limited landfill, the state is charging council in order to plan for the future waste strategy. It is hoped that the levy will help fund projects like the Advanced Resource Recovery Centre (ARRC), a waste to energy project Council is pursuing.
In past years the state has opted to fully subsidise this levy, so that no ratepayer pays extra, but that's now changing. You can see the increasing levy ($115 to $145 from 2024-2028) and the reducing subsidy (85% in 2024 to 20% in 2030) in the below table. I've included the cost impact of these changes by the state government.
What that means is that the state levy will impose a $138m additional cost on ratepayers over the next 7 years unless we can reduce our tonnage to landfill by increasing our recycling rates or introducing other technology to dispose of waste. The ARRC is part of that, but it's not built yet.
If Council charge residents $15 per visit to a tip (you can see potential revenue in the above table), that will generate about $5m per year which will offset the rising cost of the levy. Don't get me wrong, everyone will still have to pay the waste utility charge on their rates to run the waste business, but it will be offset a little by charging people who use the tips fractionally more than those who don't use the tips.
There's also some modelling that proposes a $10 charge for cars and $25 charge for trailers (which only raises about $3.2m per year to offset the levy).
We could also decide to have no tip fees and just charge everyone a larger waste utility charge to cover the operational costs. That seems less fair to me, but I'm supportive of asking the community what they prefer. In a recent survey (2021) 69% of locals said they prefer a "user pays" model to offset an increased cost to everyone (57% of survey respondents in 2024, including people who live outside the city thought a user pays model was better). If we make it similar to other councils, that seems more fair to me too.
There's no data that shows tip fees increase illegal dumping more than when there are no tip fees. Basically, the data implies that people who do illegal things do them regardless of the costs. However, by not having tip fees, the data shows our tips are used more by residents from other councils who don't want to pay a fee. Then our residents have to pay for that disposal as well. Frustrating!
Anyway, that's the latest info. No final decision yet, and consultation from the waste team is on the way. Feel free to post any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer them.
For more information you might find the following documents of interest;
Waste Network Plan - Agenda from the Waste Water & Energy Committee 11 February 2025
