By Tony Moore
About one in 12 Brisbane houses have taken up a user-pays option for green bins, which sees garden waste recycled rather than being taken to a council dump and ending up as landfill.
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said just under 25,000 green bins, which were distributed on a user pays basis, have been taken up by Brisbane homes.
That has allowed 4500 tonnes of green waste, which would have ended up in landfill, to be turned into potting mix, mulch and compost since April 2010.
Cr Quirk said he hoped the figures will rise and the cost to ratepayers of a green bin – a one-off $30 fee, then $16.25 a quarter – was "fairly low".
"There is plenty of scope for other people to take up the green waste collection service here in Brisbane," he said.
"We didn't have a specific target [for uptake], but I am pleased that one in 12 residents have taken this service up.".
Cr Quirk said many people would not need the bins, particularly those without a yard to maintain.
"It is not the type of service that going to be taken up by people in community title schemes, like units or townhouse and the like," he said.
"But it is one that give a very, very good opportunity for people living in a detached house."
Cr Quirk declined to say whether his June budget would contain incentives for extra households to take up a green waste bin, as he unveiled an advertising campaign.
"I am not a liberty to say what is or what might not be in the budget, but the costs of this scheme are low," he said.
"It will represent, for a lot of people who might be getting [private] green waste services, a saving.
"However, if we can get that one-third of green waste component that is going into waste stream unnecessarily and turn that into compost and potting mix then there is some real opportunities for that green waste in our city."
In the first 12 months, the bins were most popular in Forest Lake, where 662 ratepayers applied for a green bin.
That was followed by The Gap with 594 and Bracken Ridge with 497.
Green bins are collected on the alternate fortnight to the yellow top recycling bins.