As visitors flock to the tourist town over the summer months, the public bins have not been able to cope with the influx of waste created.

A Halls Gap business owner that wished not to be named said she has noticed the bins frequently overflowing this summer.

“It has been pretty bad, they overflow then people just dump their rubbish beside them,” she said.

“All the wildlife then gets into it which is not good at all.

“It is a nice town that we need to work hard to keep clean.”

Northern Grampians Shire Council took action to combat the waste issue in the town over the holidays, adding on extra services

“Council generally increases rubbish collection frequency to three times a working week during summer, however due to consistently increasing visitor levels, council has recently increased the working week collection frequency to five times,” Northern Grampians Shire environment and community safety manager Warren Groves said.

Despite the increase in services, Quarry Restaurant owner Stephen Johnston said more needs to be done.

“Halls Gap has had a big focus put on it as a big up and coming business area but it won’t keep growing if there is rubbish floating around all over the place,” he said.

“It’s not good for businesses because the private bins we use for our own businesses and pay for are being used by tourists.”

Related: Bins overflow during holidays

Mr Johnston said there are plenty of bins in the town but the frequency of collection needs to be lifted due to how quickly they fill up.

He said more could be done from Parks Victoria to prevent the issue from growing.

“When people go out to camping places in the national park they are told they have to remove their own rubbish so they collect it and just dump it in Halls Gap when they are done,” he said.

“Maybe there needs to be a separate site for campers to dump their rubbish.”

The issue has been an ongoing one for quite some time, rearing its head during holiday periods. 

Mr Warren said council is continuing to look into ways to address it and fix it.

“Council have increased the working week collection frequency at Halls Gap to five days as well as rostering weekend staff to address litter and excess waste issues,” he said.

“As visitor numbers continue to increase at Halls Gap, a range of longer term options encompassing, education, benchmarking, signage, compliance, infrastructure, working collaboratively with stakeholders and technology are being considered.”

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