Councillor Tracey Huges spoke about her Council portfolio responsibilities of Waste and Recycling, at the Redlands Town Hall meeting on 20 April 2026.
Her presentation was well received by the audience. Here’s what she said.
Cr Tracey Huges presentation at Redlands Town Hall meeting
I want to share an early recycling memory, of when I put a little bit of everything into one box thinking I was recycling like the model resident… in fact I am an example of many of us, confused about recycling, what goes where… and how, recycling is simply a minefield of confusion and contradiction, it’s not easy and I know, I am not alone.
Elected to Council 10 years ago, the Birkdale Recycling and Waste Transfer Centre, you know, the tip/the dump, became mine, Division 8! and there started my journey with Waste, understanding the harsh reality that we are all surrounded by Waste, self-included…am I going to be buried or burnt! I recon just about everything we see, except of course our jewelry and a few photos, is rubbish – either waste or recycling.
One of my first thoughts regarding Council’s Services was how was the money being collected…and spent… it was confronting to confirm that the legend or myth that our Recycle and Waste Centers are FREE to visit was so not correct, fact is we all pay for that service within our rates, this year it is $231, whether you access the transfer station or not. When you go over the Gateway bridge you understand the ‘user pays’ concept, in Redlands we all pay for the cost of managing our Transfer Stations whether you go once, a hundred times or for many never at all, you pay! And
You also pay for your curbside collection, this year averaging about $419 depending on the makeup of your home wheelie bins, not forgetting you have already paid for the delivery of your bins, noting that they are not really yours…they stay the property of Council, when you move, your bins don’t move with you.
Plus, you are paying a separate charge for Landfill Remediation, which is currently $19.40 each quarter to manage the legacy of 28 closed landfill (dump) sites for environmental monitoring, maintenance and rehabilitation. This direct payment is not held in a separate Reserve account, as for example, the Environment and Coastal Management Charge is, this money, collected for the remediation works goes directly into consolidated revenue….and that greatly worried me and it became a bit of a personal quest….and
I am really proud to have been able to work within Council over several years, meetings on meetings, to advocate for relevant Policy, Governance and Audit updates, I know….not exactly exciting stuff to talk to you about, and the depth of that statement might not mean much to you, but to me it was so important, to finally achieve recognition, to have special mention of this charge shown in Council’s Annual Report, where we can now track the collection and spending of this portion of our Rates notice.
Highlighting….that Council’s highest contract is our wheelie bin collection service, JJ Richards and contractors, collectively making up your largest bill, the Waste and Recycling Utility Charge, I feel that this fact does not get the recognition nor respect that it deserves, waste is truly expensive and it is anticipated that landfilling will soon become cost prohibitive, not just here in Redlands but across SEQ, however taking into account our unique Islands, Redlands has significant additional costs that are mouth-watering, when we consider barge transfers, time and resources required to empty all of our bins, every day, every week.
Which then leads me to sharing a day in the life of a truck that you see pick up your rubbish, as it meanders around your streets, until its full from about 650 homes, it then drives down to the Stapleton Landfill Centre, owned by BMI Group, who by the way, were very happy to advise me that Redlands is their best customer, obviously.. as we spend the most money with them to dump our rubbish…. That truck and driver then cues for their turn to empty their load, then that same truck turns around and drives back to Redlands for its second round of another 650 bins and then drives back to Stapleton, returning to its depot, to do again the next day, the scheduling of these trucks and drivers is extremely slick and when you see your waste collection for just a minute at the front of your home, please remember that this is a tiny part of a major jigsaw coming to life.
It is acknowledged that in future years the Stapelton landfill site will reach capacity….then what…our current trucks will not have the range or the time to collect and empty your rubbish in the one movement that they currently do now and there are discussions underway that a drop off point will need to be established somewhere, as Waste to landfill is pushed further out west. Please think about the logistics of how much that will drive up resources and of course, costs.
An innovative and exciting addition for our City’s Recycling, is our brand new Material Recovery Facility – Greenovate known as our new MRF. Redland City Council has been working with Logan and Ipswich City Council’s for many years on delivering the much talked about ‘SEQ City Deal’ thankfully strongly supported by both State and Federal Government funding. I have been lucky enough to have visited the site twice through construction and our MRF will be coming on line for Redlands at the end of this year… it is only months away…. The facility is on time and on budget and it is really exciting that our city has ownership in the MRF collaboration of 17% as the smallest shareholder. Our MRF will take all of our recycling waste going forward and that will ultimately deliver saving to our city…
Council is currently undertaking a massive landfill remediation project at Judy Holt Reserve in Birkdale, home to Redlands Rugby Union Football Club, Muddies. This project has been on the drawing board for ever and has been in the planning stages for at least the past 6 years, and thankfully for our environment and Muddies it is finally coming to fruition. It has been beyond challenging, with the scope of works expanded, to be completed over two years 2025/26.
As an uplift to the site Council has supported Muddies with three, new International sized playing fields, but the frustrations and angst that has come with the decisions of Council and theimpact to the club, has been enormous, but the Club’s members have stayed loyal and indeed grown and the club will soon be in an enviable position within Queensland and Australian Rugby, it truly will soon be an international destination for our City.
Recently I had opportunity to join the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) Waste Task Force, a large group of Councils and Industry experts and I took the opportunity and asked about the possibility of a Redland Motion to State Conference, regarding Public Housing support for ‘Green Organics Bins’, I understand that residents are often denied this option, particularly here in Redlands, which made me pretty cross.
Our public housing tenants are currently putting their gardening waste into their Red Lid bins. The addition of a green lid bin is not up to tenants, it is an opt-in choice of the property owner and in this case the Dept of Public Housing is the owner, and this decision seems to be in direct contradiction to the State Government’s Waste Strategy and their current key messaging.
Then.. Following on from joining the Task Force I was encouraged to join the Waste, Recycling Industry Association of Qld, who knew…. WRIQ where the first discussion they were having when I joined them was about filming waste for industry training, they were looking for a site…. couldn’t believe my ears and my timing….Hands Up on Teams….I immediately volunteered Redlands for filming of Waste stories both on Straddie for Cultural purposes and our mainland, lets face it Birkdale has the best views…so hopefully something fun will come from that opportunity.
Redlands Waste went viral last year with footage of one of our collection trucks sparking a fire from a battery…when you watch the initial spark, a spit second moment, it is jaw dropping and breathtakingly scary… could only imagine how impactful that was for the driver.
The problem with that incident was that sadly it was not a one-off event, we have had several ‘hot loads’, that have needed to be dumped onto the road, wherever they are, causing enormous stress to all involved and Unbelievably we recently had two separate incidents within a couple of hours of each other in Capalaba, we were not immediately sure if they were random incidents or targeted, which was genuinely frightening.
The simple message that batteries, big, small and tiny should not be put into our bins is out there, but obviously not enough. The media around these incidents have been high, the risk is enormous and the impact could be life threatening, if I could challenge you to consider how you collect and recycle your batteries as a personal resolve or Waste resolution, instead of a New Year resolution, I urge you to please make the necessary changes and talk it up to your family and neighbours about the importance of keeping batteries out of our waste collections….please!
Our Waste Operations have 8 Recycling and waste centers, plus a very popular Recycle World down at Redland Bay, these sites are managed by two different facility operators, Mainland and Islands.
To manage our waste, there are 9 different contracting companies. It must be a Logistical Nightmare, and we had close to 500,000 customer visits last year.
I also quickly learnt that one of the Waste Industry’s biggest issues as my poor recycling story highlighted, is the well intentioned resident, pointing at myself here, often discarding rubbish incorrectly, with waste and/or recycling going into the wrong bins and causing Council an enormous cost impost as recycle loads are contaminated and need to be separated and redirected to landfill, plus evidence shows that over half of waste going into our red lid bins can be recycled or composted.
Education will be key to making significant changes to our behavior, it is estimated that contamination in our Red lid bins is cira 16% and similar contamination in our yellow lid bins, in the vicinity of 15%, combined that equates to a huge discrepancy and a shite load of waste tonnage going in the wrong direction every week.
Simply putting the right rubbish in the right bin should be an easy decision, fact is, it is not….and
Faced with the need for change, last year Council ran the highly successful LETS GET IT SORTED bin inspection program via a State Government Grant focused on our yellow recycle bins, many of you would have received a yellow star rating on your bins. I was shattered, one fortnight I got a yellow tag with only 4 stars and the word ‘Candle’ written on it. I remembered that Candle, it was glass, with a little residue wax in the bottom, I was confident that it should go into the recycle bin, but Dohh, obviously I got that wrong! Which again highlights just how hard it is to get is sorted…correctly.
Without sharing the outcome of the campaign in detail,….. please put your hand up if you live in Alexandra Hills or Birkdale….well done you, top score without naming or shaming and super enormous thanks to all who took note and made those critical small changes, as across the city we absolutely saw an overall measurable uptick of positive change.
As waste portfolio Chair I have found a few new pen pals, which shows me how much our residents care about our overall Waste situation, one gent wrote to me to share his concern, I gave him a call and we chatted for ages, he lives on one of our Islands and highlighted the impressive changes to waste NORFOLK ISLAND has achieved.
So over I went, took my 83 year old Mother in Law for a couple of days and we had the best time, truly fabulous holiday destination and so affordable, I was excited that I got to spend hours with their waste team, they were so happy to share their waste journey and in torrential rain I learnt so much about what waste collection could be, it highlighted to me how differently waste can be managed, particularly in smaller Island communities and it is true, we only know what we know….this is how its been done and this is how we do it…Change is painful.
Which leads me to look to the future, Redland City Waste management must change, to do nothing is not an option.
You can expect changes to entry conditions into our Waste and Transfer Stations, in whatever form that looks like, that will be controversial for sure, constant negotiations and changes to Waste Contracts that you won’t see, plus don’t forget our new MRF. Of note, you should also be aware that future models of incineration are currently being investigated for our South East Queensland region, it is coming….
All that being said, a small Council team manage a vast network of waste movement that is continually crisscrossing across our city, and beyond, and I am so proud to share that they were clearly voted #1, first in the RCC Customer Satisfaction survey, by our residents!
Reminding me, that I grew up with Dad leaving a couple of large bottles of beer out the front for our Garbo at Christmas, a worthy tradition that thankfully still exists today. My personal thanks to you for upholding that tradition, such a small token and means so much to our awesome crews.
As I leave you with my humbled and jumbled thoughts about the enormous impact and cost of our Waste systems and the wider industry, it is truly a topic that I had no interest in, no understanding of and certainly no passion for….but, as my early and pretty silly recycling story will stay with me forever, I am so conscious that we are surrounded by rubbish and I encourage you all to think about where yours goes.
I genuinely share, that the more I learn about Waste, the less I know. Thank you.
Following her presentation Cr Tracey Huges took questions from the audience and provided further comments. The meeting attendees thanked Cr Huges for her attendance, her presentation and the work she had put into over-viewing the waste and recycling portfolio.
The next Town Hall meeting will be 18 May 2026 at the Scout Hall in Ormiston. Cr Paul Bishop with be speaking about his arts and heritage portfolio.
