A RIVERLAND council began a district-wide hard waste collection this week after a significant number of requests from ratepayers over recent months.
Berri Barmera Council started the collection on Monday and will pick up hard waste in the Berri, Cobdogla, Loveday, Monash, Glossop and Barmera townships over the next month.
Rural residents in the district outside the kerbside collection zones are able to obtain a single-use voucher valued at $50 to use at the Cleanaway Waste Transfer Station in Monash.
The council is utilising a quarter of the $1 million in Drought Communities Programme funding, granted by the Federal Government earlier this year, to carry out the collection.
Berri Barmera Council chief executive officer Karyn Burton said it was important for the collection to be accessible to every ratepayer in the district.
“We’ve got the small towns being done and we have the voucher system for the rural areas as well, so it is available district-wide,” she said.
“A lot of the feedback we are getting is really positive because people have been pestering us for a long time asking when we would do another hard waste collection.
“It’s not a cheap thing for councils to do, which is why we are utilising $250,000 from the Drought Communities Programme.”
Ms Burton said the council would consider regular hard waste collections in the future.
“We may look to do the towns ongoing on a rolling basis, so every three years residents will know they have a collection,” she said.
“We get asked regularly about when the next hard waste collection will be, so this is a service everyone has asked about for a long time.”
“Everyone loves a good spring clean.”
For more information on the hard waste collection – including what can be put out, when each zone will have its collection, and how to obtain a hard waste voucher – visit www.berribarmera.sa.gov.au.