North Sydney Garbage

It only took me 10 years, but I finally returned to North Sydney Council for some fresh action, determined to document the true garbage collections that take place, which is definitely out of the ordinary today. If you were to imagine your typical domestic waste service in modern Australia, you picture a side loader picking up a red, yellow or green lidded wheelie bin... otherwise a rear loader with runners doing the same task. What is probably much unknown is that North Sydney is home to a damn lot of the old days cylindrical manual garbage bins, all of which serve their individual households and get emptied regularly as part of the weekly garbage service - just like a wheelie bin would in any other council. Basically here an almost obsolete method of rubbish collection is still utilised and notably in great multitude, something which has for some time been phased out almost entirely across the country in favour of wheelie bins and automated collections.

Even though there are houses and unit blocks in North Sydney with 120/240L bins, there is still a great abundance of the small hand loaded 55/60L containers, perhaps there are even more of them than MGBs! Whilst there are other councils in inner Sydney which still have some manual garbage bins around, their use is very limited, only existing where required, whereas the North Sydney situation has essentially been a case of one-size-fits-all or non-discriminatory. I myself wasn’t totally aware of the exact extent of reliance on the manual bins locally, until I went along on this day and saw the groups of modern red lidded 60Ls serving units, presented both on and off the street. Needless to say, the weekly garbage service here stands out from the typical job across the rest of Australia, especially when you look at metropolitan areas. I understand the council is aiming at transitioning more households to 80/120L bins and maintaining 60Ls on a needs basis, but I reckon plenty of the little bins will remain.

North Sydney Council falls into the inner city category, a region where rear loaders are essential, with half a dozen open back garbage trucks run by crews of 3 garbos each, taking care of residential garbage, recycling, green waste and clean-up. I reckon these trucks that have been used are pretty cool/unique, because how often do you find Scania rear loaders doing domestic waste collections? I remember when I was working at URM in 2011, these Scania P280 models with Superior Pak bodies started showing up for the new North Sydney contract, however 2 would also be destined for the City of Sydney contract. It was an unfamiliar sight, but far from ugly too, I reckon they’re real good looking trucks, also got a neat sound to them. The brilliant thing about these Scania rear loaders, is that they were all ordered as semi-autos with clutch take-off... great for residential application with the constant stop/start! :P Otherwise appears like this body/truck combination goes alright, they’ve been getting the job done for years now.

Back in March 2019 I’d just knocked over a night shift and committed to a short detour on the journey home, so I could finally tick off North Sydney Garbage. With the help of contacts, I knew exactly what truck to look for and where to find it, things were sorted in advance... if only it was always so easy. From 7am on this Thursday morning I ended up tagging along with truck 377 and the team between the suburbs of Waverton and Wollstonecraft. All I can say is that it was a pleasure witnessing these guys getting the job done. You have to admire the motivation, enthusiasm, cooperation, efficiency and speed of what they were doing... it was actually a refreshing scene after being more familiar with slow, lazy and useless workers who wouldn’t be able to keep up with this pace and intensity. Most crews in North Sydney hook in and get the job done swiftly with strategy and preparation, there’s no stuffing around dragging the day out or going slow. You’ll notice the pair of orange 240Ls at play, these are for the “binning up” concept, where you bulk up the contents of the small bins for a quick consolidated lift into the truck, rather than emptying all the 60Ls individually. Anyway get to the action now, just want to give a massive cheers to the boys for putting on a show and I hope everybody enjoys the footage!