CANTERBURY-BANKSTOWN COUNCIL TAKES ACTION ON WASTE REVIEW

Canterbury-Bankstown Council has taken immediate action following a review into our waste service.

Our preliminary findings have identified around 700 bins which were being emptied in the same garbage truck as recycle waste bins.

The review found that of the 400,000 bins collected across the City each fortnight, less than one per cent were impacted.

Mayor Khal Asfour says once he was made aware that this was happening, he put in place arrangements to ensure it does not happen again.

“When I learnt the full extent of what was happening, I ordered an immediate review of our waste services.  This review isn’t about pointing the finger of blame at anyone but about identifying the problem and fixing it quickly – and that’s what I’ve done,” Mayor Asfour says.

“The preliminary findings showed that those bins affected by mixing general and recycled waste into the same truck were in narrow streets and laneways that were difficult to access. The practise was in place under the former Canterbury Council who used a private contractor,” Mayor Asfour says.

“Using the larger trucks in those narrow streets posed a serious safety risk to our drivers, and the community. But now all recycling bins, as well as any missed bins, will be collected by dedicated recycling trucks and taken to our recycling processing facility.”

Our preliminary findings have led to these changes:

• An additional two extra rear loader trucks, solely dedicated to collect recycling bins in hard-to-access streets and laneways (as well as missed recycling bins).
• The re-design of the existing collection runs to create efficiencies, as well as utilising existing trucks.
• Our review has also identified around 15 ‘Infirm’ locations where we enter the property due to the resident not be able to present bins and service all the bins in the one truck. Council staff will now separate the waste to the appropriate truck.
• Council will find the costs to make the necessary changes and residents will not be affected.In addition to these changes we are rolling out an Australian first for a Council: AI in garbage trucks to help us with recycling issues.

  Cameras are fitted in a garbage truck, which takes photos once the recycling bin has been tipped into the truck. The AI then looks at these photos to detect contaminants.

  The AI runs in the cloud and looks at all photos taken by the truck camera (about 6,000 photos per day).

  According to Troy Leedham, Systems Coordinator Waste, the AI can detect any objects which shouldn’t be in the recycling bin, such as plastic bags, foam, green waste, other foreign objects.

  “The results are then displayed onto a dashboard which we can use to provide targeted education to residents. The AI was built inhouse using our own staff. We are finding 30 per cent of all recycling bins in the LGA are contaminated, with the main contaminant being plastic bags,” Mr Leedham says.

  “We ran several trials using different types of AI and, using what we learnt from the trials, we looked at building it in house. This proved to be much more successful, as it is now built and running every day on our trucks.”

  “When the AI detects objects, the confidence level is averaging 8 per cent. More training is needed to increase this level however this is a really good confidence level for AI.”