Jill and I have two homestays, one in the cbd and the other 30 km away on our lifestyle block next to our own house.
Both have a weekly official collection (paid through local taxes) for general waste, with a recycling bin and glass bottle crate alternating weekly.
General waste goes into 60 litre official red bags and you can put out as many as you like. That works well because we can buy extra bags as required.
Garbage management has always been the big challenge, because some guests either do not read my instructions or choose to ignore it, and I end up fishing through the recycling bin to remove illegal stuff, otherwise they may not collect it.
But it’s going to get worse because the local council is introducing radical changes in September:
Red bags will be replaced with a 140 litre wheelie bin COLLECTED ONLY FORTNIGHTLY! This will be a nightmare in the high season when we have high occupancy and large amounts of garbage generated. We had a large group of young Chinese people here recently and I had to put out 5 bags for collection.
I think I will be doing frequent excess garbage runs to the transfer station as I cannot fathom any way of persuading guests to create less waste or take theirs when they leave.
I have a friend who manages 90 homestays as a business and under the new garbage regime she will inevitably have to pay private contractors. She has made a submission to the council but there will be little sympathy as homestays are seen as a gold mine for the privileged and in competition with hotels and motels.