Piled up: J&J Equipment Hire struggles to deal with the influx of container deposits due to backlogs and the need for more bins. Photo: Stephen Royals
Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme began in early November and Seymour’s only drop-off point has since experienced an influx of deposits.
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J&J Equipment Hire owners Stephen and Katrina Royals have taken on the responsibility of being the rural collection depot for the recycling program with Visy.
Mr Royals said they were initially supposed to receive only 26 bins for the collection but they were accidentally sent two extras.
But even with the extra two bins, more were needed to deal with the influx of deposits.
“We get around 1000 articles (per bin) ... some bins a bit less, some a bit more,” he said.
“We collect about 28,000 articles per week.
“The quickest we fill the bin is in one day.”
Mr Royals said they tried to take in as much as possible, but backlogs had piled up because they received so much.
“We’ve settled down with some of the bigger numbers that we’ve been trying to reduce ... taking the larger numbers and sending them to the bigger collection points,” he said.
“On average, a day-and-a-half and the bins are full again.”
He said they were meant to open three days a week, but most of the time they had to close down the last drop-off day because of the overflowing bins.
The depot currently has at least 25,000 articles in the yard it has yet to get rid of.
“It’s just that there’s not enough bins to go around,” Mr Royals said.
“There is talk that they will do more bins, but no-one’s got enough bins.”
Mr Royals said even Shepparton’s drop-off point received 60,000 articles daily and had to empty the contents of its yard to an adjacent building to allow the articles to be crushed so the bins could be reused.
Needs to go: All units that arrive at J&J Equipment Hire's yard are handled by hand. The containers are backlogged due to influx of deposits and not enough bins to counter it. Photo: Stephen Royals
However, the articles deposited at the Seymour depot can not be crushed because the containers must come in whole with a legible barcode to be accepted.
J&J Equipment handles all the deposits by hand and does not go through an automated counter.
“If we could crush the items, we’d get a lot more in the bins,” Mr Royals said.
He said the bins were emptied once a week.
“Once the truck comes in, even before opening hours, people are coming in trying to offload their materials,” he said.
Mr Royals hopes the influx settles down as winter approaches.
“Hopefully it settles down in a little bit and we’ll try to get rid of the backlogs,” he said.
“We’ve been requesting for a double empty in the week, and Visy has acknowledged that ... but they haven’t done anything about it.”
He said they could do nothing about the pile-up and had rejected some people depositing containers.
“I’ve got nowhere to put it,” he tells customers.
“I still end up with extra stock every week, but not in vast numbers.
“I do offer the services of the other collection points for people to go to.”
He said it was hard when people did not want to travel to get rid of their waste.
“They want a local depot to be able to drop it in cleanly and a smooth operation,” he said.
Mr Royals said eliminating backlogs might take six to eight months unless a second weekly empty was introduced.
“Unless they (Visy) actually come in and empty the backlog, they could clear it pretty quick,” he said.
“All I gotta do is bring another 28 bins or bring me 28 bins twice a week, and I’d be okay ... I’d get rid of a fair bit of box backlog.
“It’s still not gonna solve the issue of people wanting to give me more.”
Now, Mr Royals hopes to receive more bins as he expects the demand to be about 40,000 to 45,000 units weekly.
“I suppose the top and bottom of it is we just need the bins,” he said.
“Visy needs to allocate more bins so that we can collect more products.”
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