Brimbank council is cracking down on illegal rubbish dumping.
At its April meeting, council endorsed a comprehensive action plan to tackle the issue of illegal rubbish dumping and keep Brimbank clean and beautiful.
Council will introduce tighter controls, stronger deterrents, tougher enforcement, more targeted and highly accessible community-wide education and communication programs, and also more collections.
Under the plan, council proposes to increase its investment in dealing with dumped rubbish by more than 50 per cent.
The prevention measures in the action plan include the the expansion of the Resource Recovery Centre to accept additional problematic items such as soft plastics and styrofoam.
There will be a range of targeted engagement and education campaigns aimed at residents, landlords, estate agents, households and businesses; and the development of new services to support the community to responsibly dispose of difficult items.
Council will install additional CCTV cameras in rubbish dumping hotspots, increase resources to support investigations and prosecutions, while it will also expand the existing collection service to assist with the high volume of dumped rubbish services by undertaking additional proactive weekend collections.
Councillor Daniel Kruk said every councillor had raised the issue of illgeally dumped rubbish, which has become a massive problem in the municipality.
He said the council spends more than $1 million on illegal dumping each year with more than 9000 incidents reported.
“We’ve all pushed for stronger action. This report is not just an officer lead response, it’s in combination of all of our inputs,” he said.
“I’m proud to stand with councillors who see eye-to-eye on the urgency of tackling illegal dumping head on.
“Brimbank has a dumping problem and it’s out of control … just to pick up after other people who can’t be bothered doing the right thing.
“That’s $1 million that could have gone to other services.
“The truth is residents are angry and feed up and they have every right to be. People are sick of calling it in, waiting for action, only to see it happen the next night.
“We will not stand for being the default janitor for everyone else’s responsibility.”
