By Laura Michell
Hume and Whittlesea councils are waging a war on waste, with taskforces set up to tackle illegal dumping in both municipalities.
In Hume, a trial taskforce working to reduce dumped rubbish in 12 suburbs will be extended citywide and become a permanent program after council’s clean-up costs reduced for the first time in years.
And in Whittlesea, people who dump commercial quantities of waste could be named and shamed.
Hume council launched its waste response program in October 2023. The program was initially approved to work in the 12 suburbs with the highest incidences of dumped rubbish until January 30, 2026.
But during a council meeting on March 24, councillors voted to extend the program to all of the city’s 26 suburbs and make it a permanent resource based on its “fantastic” success to date.
A report to the council meeting stated that in the past 12 months, the waste response team has attended to 5665 requests within the 12 target suburbs. Of those, 4727 were resolved – an 83 per cent success rate.
The report revealed that in 2021-22, council spent $4 million responding to and cleaning up litter and illegal dumping, rising to $4.7 million in 2022-23.
Clean-up costs fell to $4.3 million (including the cost of the program) in 2023-24, the report stated.
Cr Naim Kurt said the program was the first of its kind in Victoria and needed to be expanded citywide as it was helping to shift attitudes towards rubbish dumping.
“After just one year the impact has been clear,” he said.
Whittlesea has asked council chief executive Craig Lloyd to consider publicising when offenders are caught illegally dumping commercial quantities of waste by publicly disclosing their names, photos, and details of the offending (where legally permissible), through official media and social media channels.
Whittlesea council set up a waste taskforce earlier this year, which has run two compliance and enforcement operations targeting Mason Quarter, The Patch, Wollert Rise, Findonview, Stonefields, Lyndarum North, and Arramont estates, responding to 403 incidents of dumped rubbish.
It issued 179 notices ordering the rubbish be removed, 58 infringements and removed rubbish from 63 public sites, a report to the March 18 council meeting said.
