Survey: Council Clean-ups

• The clean ups should be left to the old 2 per year system due to our location and the town anticipation. Also it keeps the town to only having piles of rubbish twice a year not dotted all over the year.

• This is vital service for the Bundeena & Maianbar communities-please continue x2 a year

• Recycling is so important for our community- which the twice yearly clean up provides

• Why change what was working quite well.

• a great service much loved by our community and it encouraged recycling and reuse as many items would be salvaged by members of the community prior to pickup

• The old system was reliable, with adequate notice, so good. Please bring it back. Also, easy with no on- line stuff to do,which is difficult for us oldies

• Why discontinue this? If it's money, tell us how much rates would increase and we can decide whether or not we'll pay that. Its good for the community, good for the tips and good for a whole bunch of old blokes who get to go to work in semi retirement. Downright un-Australian to do what you did in stopping this bi-annual ritual. Give yerself an uppercut!

• Please don’t change things that are working well. A lot of items put out for collection are recycled by locals when the dates for collection are set. Why put more rubbish in our earth and change a system that’s working.

• I picked up a 3 piece beautiful leather suite, outdoor benches, mirrors, statutes, pottery, clothes etc., over the years. So much would have gone to landfill. It's also a wonderful social event for the community.

• I agree the general twice a year clean up is great for the reasons stated. Not everyone has time to check the local FB page for items to be recycled etc or even remember to book online. "If something works, why fix it?"

• The new system does not account for kilometer distance through the park, the recycling and reuse benefits for the local community of a general clean up, and the new system will contribute to increased landfill.

• We pay equivalent Council rates and do not have local access to services available in the rest of the Sutherland Shire. Now we don't even have a general council clean up.

• Yes please bring the old system of two general curbside cleanups back

• If not the old system, then one general and one individual booked service please

• We tend to import more than we dispose of. We have made good use of other people's 'junk'. In this manner the amount of rubbish collected by Council would be actually less than if local scavenging is not permitted.

• Our community is better served by 2 general clean-ups per year. Ut allows us to recycle and to provide much needed second hand items to those in need.

• If council are serious about reducing landfill they need to facilitate better recycling and green waste. Many councils now include compostable bags with food scraps in their green waste bins. It would be good if council could advertise and make it easy for other recycling/clean ups - for example, I only recently found out that Bunnings collect and recycle (I hope) plastic pot plant containers. Have group pick-ups for paints and chemicals - not everyone has access to transport. Maybe to source other products that are more sustainable - for instance, I have a bench-top bucket for my compost, but it deteriorates in the sun. I found one online that is made of bamboo. Knowing where to purchase more of these everyday items that often do not last if made of plastics.

• The curbside clean ups are great for recycling items and avoid them going into landfill, but much easier when you can know when the clean up is, and head out to "street-shop".

• Support for the valuable waste reducing option of 2 times a year set shared curb-side clean up dates, N.B.with a special extra solution for special occasions of need. Why shared/group clean-ups? Many reasons. More recycling happens with the shared/group clean-ups, as apposed to the single constant year round seperated clean-ups. The bigger the clean-up, especially with that shared time it takes to remove everyone's the same few days, then the more recycling happens. People look at different items from different piles, formulate ideas ( e.g. taking the chairs from one pile to fit with a table from another pile, a table which has a leg fallen off, so they get the screws etc off something from another pile to fix it), they then take stuff home, if various items or furniture don't fit or work so well, they know they can throw back out whichever of the items don't quite fit, back onto on their own pile for someone else. The security of knowing that they can try items out, and see if they actually fit in their house and see if they can be fixed up, while simultaneously having their own pile, or anyone's nearby, to put the items back out on, and not have to take them all the way back to the pile they got it from, or be embarassed to take it back to the pile they took it from originally, encourages creativity and experimentation.

This creativity often leads to realising they may need something further to add to make it fit and they can get more component parts off the shared clean-up, e.g. now they know the chairs fit, they go get some material, (sometimes on a different pile) to cover the chairs, equally it encourages use of local business in the local and surrounding areas as they now want to go to e.g. to a fabric shop for nice finishing touches, or Hardware store etc to get some sandpaper or lacquer etc to tidy up their latest item. This takes financial pressure off families reducing need for large outlays to in order shift their surrounds to a better functioning end result , this allows them, without having to feel the potential embarrassment of asking for help, to instead become self-resourceful (with the assistance of the clean-up) by getting rid of things that weren't working for them, and to swap into a better set-up, for example... older people, who's families have left home, downsizing to smaller dining tables, get rid of their larger one onto the clean-up, giving them more space in their house to move things around to create space for hobbies like the addition of a separate little table for a sewing nook, or perhaps to bring off the clean-up an exercise bicycle to improve their health since they are older. This then allows young people, now having children, who's family is growing, to up-size to a bigger family table off the clean-up, with them putting their smaller one out This amazing and very real dynamic process, of which their are thousands of examples, is only a function of this en-mass sharing of items and component parts, and in Bundeena has become somewhat a festival of street shopping loved by many, many adults and children alike. I have four sons who are now in their teens and twenties, and they all say they have loved it, they have many great memories, it is how they all learnt to fix skateboards by getting three broken ones off different piles and piecing them together to make one good one, going to a local shop to buy some wheel bearings to finalise the job, it encourages ingenuity, work-ethic, perseverance, mechanical awareness and gives them a huge sense of  satisfaction, the boys love the hunt, finding the parts they need, often waiting for the next clean-up 6 months later to complete the job, needing extra wheels or screws, and the fun e.g. spinning someones thrown out swivel chair around and around in circles, and bringing it home on their shoulders like a trophy to replace their old stiff half busted one at home, and joyously throwing the old one out on their own clean-up pile, it makes them happy, a sense of them being the ones to improve the house, not just mum and dad, They have so many stories. Someones trash being someone else's treasure, this is the perfect place for experimentation. Through this shared clean-up, young people have successfully had opportunities for a sense of discovery, and creative exploration and experimentation. And for them it's free! It doesn't matter if their creation doesn't work, no body cares if they try to build something with the stuff and it looks worse after they try, they can just throw it out, it was already rubbish, now they can try again at no cost (or embarrassment) to anyone. These free resources help them learn essential repairing skills that can truly help to make their future lives work. Professional recyclers who know the piles are all out come round and take the metal and what ever their specialty is. Because of the substantial travel cost to and from Bundeena, it is not worth general recyclers to come out here on the chance there is one pile every now and then, so removing the shared clean-up discourages these visiting specialised recyclers. This shared clean-up is better for the rubbish disposal companies hired by council, more piles at one time makes less trips in and out of the National park to fill a truck, saving time and saving petrol so it's better also for the environment lowering fuel usage, and the extra recycling that goes on, because of the group clean-ups encouraging the mass re-use of items, also means less waste and less landfill. 

How do I be tactful about this next point....

Less organised and quite possibly messier people are sometimes, potentially often, not as organised as tidy people, (an obvious common reality), so when tidy people use the clean-up, it encourages messier people at the same time to do the same, this reduces fire hazards, and reduces set-ups that encourage vermin, and because messier people start cleaning, then also all the other hidden benefits and wonderful knock-on effects arrive once the disorganised refresh their lives.  If only the organised people ring up and book a pile just for them selves, the disorganised may never get around to booking or planning anything, as is the nature of disorganised people who just let problems build up, the shared clean-up, being a group and guilt free activity, encourages cleaning up, and solves problems before they happen.

Unique solution suggestion: Provide a number of special occasion single house-hold clean-ups vouchers for a shared use. Most people are fine to wait for the clean-up twice a year. Not many people are moving house, you could give a set individual clean-up voucher days to the town as a whole that never need to be used, making them available to whoever specially needs them for special times e.g. one for each month that anyone, any few households could share if they really need it for those more intense special times/emergencies like for those with with major renovations or moving house or someone dies and their house has to be a cleaned up or their is a natural or fire disaster these are rare occasions, that only sometimes need a council clean-up, and the town can share these special occasion clean-up vouchers, making a shareable one available such that a truck can come out and make good use of it's petrol by attending a shared clean-up moment, of a few residents, perhaps even not so many of these would be needed over the year as most will participate in the main fun shared clean-ups and the shared nature of these vouchers could again encourage the recycling nature of shared piles.

Another point is that we are a beautiful area admired as a holiday destination, and when we know when clean-ups are happening we can organise our special events, like weddings and family gatherings/parties around times when we know it will look pretty, and have less recycled materials around, and equally, when we have family members in need of 2nd hand materials, and furnishings etc, we can invite them down for our Bundeena Maianbar street shopping times and all the associated clean-up festivities, ensuring even more recyclers feel it's worthwhile to make the trek to our villages. It is then not just a win win situation, it becomes, on so many fronts, a win win win win win win win situation. Losing our shared clean-up recycling festivities seems a ridiculous loss, when we can all keep so many wins by keeping it. We as villagers in our twin villages Bundeena and Maianbar, are examples of what is possible, not only as individuals individually being creative, enhancing our own lives by recycling/reusing/re-purposing etc through our group/shared clean-up, but also as a group collecting, sharing and moving on items to people in need, and holding a sale with resulting funds going to charity. We need to be supported in our continuing shared clean-up and recycling activities because it makes way way way way way way way more sense.

• Cost of individual clean up must be higher are they try to stop people using y clean up

• I have found many pieces of furniture snd sporting equipment for my family over the last 35 years - I have contributed toys, games, camping and sporting equipment as well - the curbside cleanups contribute to a circular economy, ensuring that useful items are reused rather than sent to landfill. Individual cleanups are hit & miss - knowing the cleanup weekend dates means that people are on the lookout for useful items to reuse or repurpose.

• Twice a year is fantastic for recycling, the new system is going to end up been more trips into Bundeena and Maianbar in a year then the old system

• A much green cleaner way as residents in need can make the most of this time. I also feel people are encouraged to clear out instead of hoarding when there are 2 set dates

• The twice yearly clean ups meant we had time to put things out & often collected what we needed as well as disposing of things we didn’t need for SSC to collect!

• Bi annually makes more sense for our isolated community ie less trips out here for the council trucks.

• A better chance for items to be recycled if we have it town wide and it surely saves the council money!

• It's part of the community and items are recycled

• General clean up 2x year is preferable . Promotes recycling .items on footpath contained to twice a year versus randomised Individual clean ups throughout the year . Surely more efficient resources and better for the environment if trucks ate not driving out for rubbish one or two households .

• Please restore the twice a year council curbside clean-up.

• I pay rates I need the old system back it is confident for me

• Much easier to have twice yearly cleanups as it makes you throw out ad clean up your property regularly please bring this back

• It is amazing for recycling and helps people in cost of living crisis, much loved by local residents

• Imagine how much is recycled instead of going to land fill very backward thinking from the council

• Why change something that works!

• This is the only way to get people to clear their stuff out, prevent rubbish build up and to stop illegal dumping in the national park

• Two community clean ups per year encourages EVERY household to clear out their rubbish not just the ones who go to the effort of booking one in

• Our bi-annual clean ups saved so many unwanted items from landfill. Please bring them back to our small sustainable village.

• Two general cleanups per year is great for the community. Someone's trash becomes someone's treasure and it saves a lot of rubbish ending up at the tip

• The old system was perfect

• The set dates for the community are preferred. It would also easier to have the trucks come twice a year than at all different times. It deters people from randomly adding rubbish to booked piles as well.

• The benefit of regular cleanups outweigh the cost savings the council is seeking to achieve. The risk of dumping in this sensitive environmental area need to be factored into the equation.

• Both Sandy and I are in agreement on 2 scheduled cleanups per year.

• Preference is to have curbside cleanups and second choice is to have one general curbside cleanup and one bookable individual cleanup.

• With this new system there seems to be rubbish on the streets every week

• A much preferred system for this community

• Two pre-set cleanups definitely mean less waste to landfill as people often take and reuse otherwise abandoned goods.

• If it's impossible to retain the two general cleanups, one general and one booked is my second preference

• A lot of homes in Bundeena/ Maianbar do not have direct kerbside access. This means that with the new 2 bookings system, one would have to utilise the road or a neighbouring kerbside to place items. Previous systems meant that there were communal drop off points and no one was inconvenienced.

• Smaller clean ups mean residents can spread out collecting treasures

• People should be able to book two themselves! Why try and do two a year for everyone…

• This is stupid

• Much prefer to book our own. The old system was outdated & didn’t work at all for us.

• Flexibility is the key for residents and Council

• General cleanups are a great way to promote recycling. But I can see the value of occasional individual pickup eg. for moving house.

• I agree that the general curbside cleanup provides an opportunity to reuse items put out instead of them going to landfill.

• Split the difference i reckon- Let people have a bookable one - especially helpful if renovating or moving house- and one curb side general one where we can all engage in swaps and recycling (un-offically)

• I would also like a communal e waste drop off once a year.

• If it is one or the other prefer the old way