‘The Pile’: How a Rubbish Heap Became a Suburban Nightmare
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A battle has erupted in an affluent Sydney suburb between the council and the residents over a huge pile of rubbish, now named “The Pile,” that the residents claim has been there for almost six years.
The Pile has become a mainstay of Chiswick, a suburb of Sydney where the median house price is $4m. The Pile contains every type of rubbish imaginable and according to residents, has only magnified in recent years.
Elle Morgan-Thomas, a resident who lives just 150m from the heap of rubbish, told Domain that The Pile was filled with items that are “practically good as new”, including “perfectly usable second-hand appliances, whitegoods, home furnishings, decor, books, clothes, shoes and jewellery”.
Despite being packed with valuable items, residents are claiming The Pile is getting bigger and becoming a hazard to the community.
“Aside from the fact it is unsightly, it’s also legitimately hazardous – it blocks footpaths and hinders disability and pram access, there is broken glass everywhere,” she told the outlet.
The Pile was borne out of pandemic-induced cleaning, as residents began to clear out their homes. However, it was left unchecked and has only grown larger, becoming even more of a hazard during the warmer months.
“The flies get out of control, especially in warm weather and the grass and gardens get damaged by the volume of junk and how long it sits here,” Morgan-Thomas said.
The root cause is consumption levels
Morgan-Thomas, along with fellow resident Kathryn Rutkowski, periodically goes through The Pile and promotes some of the reusable stuff on a Facebook group.
She said she moves at least two tonnes of goods from the area every six months.
A spokesman for the City of Canada Bay told NewsWire they had “removed all kerbside rubbish from that location in Chiswick”.
The council confirmed they were “currently investigating the potential occurrence of illegal dumping at the site, which coincided with the scheduled bulk household collection for this zone”.
The council “doubled” its bulk household collections for residents living in side apartments, which doubled their access to hard rubbish, going from two times a year to four, according to the spokesman.
“With our first collection under this new model now underway, we expect kerbside materials to decrease over time as collection frequency increases,” they said.
Despite this, Morgan-Thomas felt that the increased collections wouldn’t solve the root of the problem and would just encourage more people to throw their rubbish more often.
“I think they thought increasing frequency would help, but then they scheduled all the apartments in our local area for the same weekend and probably didn’t realise that has completely undermined the frequency change, covering our entire suburb in even more piles,” she told Domain.
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