2014-03-25 Infrastructure & Services Committee Agenda

INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICES MEETING AGENDA                                      25 MARCH 2014


Finance & Risk

The predicted annual cost to Noosa Council is $66,000 based on the volume of material
delivered over the past 12 months. This cost will increase by CPI each year.


Procurement requirements

The Local Government Act requires that open tenders be offered for contracts in excess of
$200,000. In this instance the only viable location for delivery of recyclable material is the MRF
at Nambour and contracting with either SCRC or VISY Recycling. In this instance it is not viable
to seek open tenders based on the geography and specialisation of the offering and exemption is
recommended to Council under Section 235 (a) and (b) of the Local Government Regulations of
2012.

Local Government Regulations 2012 - Section 235 - Other exceptions:

A local government may enter into a medium-sized contractual arrangement or large-sized
contractual arrangement without first inviting written quotes or tenders if –

(a) the local government resolves it is satisfied that there is only 1 supplier who is reasonably
available; or

(b) the local government resolves that, because of the specialised or confidential nature of the
services that are sought, it would be impractical or disadvantageous for the local government to
invite quotes or tenders;


Risk of Over Compaction

Recyclable materials must not be over compacted in collection vehicles or the product quality is
affected (e.g. glass breakage, paper impregnated with glass fines) and the selling price of
processed material is reduced. The VISY proposal has significant penalties on an increasing
scale for over compaction to protect VISY against poor performance of the collection contractor.

If over compaction of material occurs or contamination levels breach contracted levels then
progressively higher penalties are imposed. Cleanaway (Council’s collection contractor) are
satisfied with the compaction levels proposed by VISY Recycling.


Risk of Contamination

Contamination is caused when customers place non-recyclable material in the recycling
container. Some hazardous materials impact on plant workers, or contaminate the other
recyclable material, (i.e. burst oil or paint containers contaminating other materials.). The
processing contractor must pay high disposal fees to dump contaminated material and the
manual sorting costs of processing material rise substantially as contamination increases.

The current Noosa contamination of approx. 5% is good and imposes no penalty other than a
gate fee. Under the VISY proposal, the gate fee increases as contamination levels increase.




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