A former Sunbury shire councillor says the illegal dumping of rubbish on roadsides in Melbourne’s outer suburbs has reached epidemic proportions. Authorities say the problem has doubled in five years and they now received four thousand reports of illegal dumping annually. Councils say they do not have the resources to address it, leaving residents to pay contractors themselves to remove the waste.
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00:00An ugly and costly mess.
00:05In Melbourne's rapidly expanding north-west, illegally dumped commercial and household
00:09waste litters the landscape.
00:11These are colouring books, there's bits of cars, there's wood, styrofoam, there's some
00:17building waste.
00:19Charlie Jarrod's earth-moving business usually focuses on construction sites, but lately
00:25he's spending his days picking up illegally dumped rubbish.
00:29It seems like it was never an issue and then suddenly it's a huge problem.
00:32Calls used to come in once a month, now they're almost daily.
00:37To collect rubbish, he says, is dumped by locals and dodgy contractors.
00:43A lot of people will say that they're tipping it off at a reputable site and then they just
00:46don't and they pocket all the money.
00:48When Jack Medcraft was on the Sunbury Council, he could see the problem growing.
00:53Now he says it's an epidemic.
00:56They don't want to go to the tip.
00:57They get a hard waste collection.
00:58They don't want to use it.
00:59You know, it's easier to get a trail and dump your crap out in the street.
01:02The Environment Protection Authority says rubbish dumping in Victoria has doubled over
01:07the past five years.
01:09They receive about 11 reports a day, that's over 4,000 reports in a year, but last year
01:15they only brought 55 matters to court.
01:17Penalties will range from about $400 if you're an individual that litters, but for more aggravated
01:23pollution that could be millions of dollars in fines, but equally jail time.
01:27I don't think the penalties are harsh enough, really, you hit them in the court, what happens?
01:31You know, a $1,000 fine I think it is.
01:34That's nothing.
01:35The responsibility of roadside rubbish falls on local councils, but they say they don't
01:39have the adequate resources to clean it all up.
01:42So some residents are paying for it themselves.
01:46And Charlie Jarrett says that won't change until authorities crack down on offenders.
01:51You'd see it decline if they actually, you know, took it seriously.
01:54A mess that's still some way from being cleaned up.