By KIANNA DOUTHAT

Picking the trash from the treasure is proving a little harder for curb side hard rubbish foragers as councils increasingly shift to a call-based system of hard waste collection.

Residents are now required to call their local council if they have hard waste they want removed.

Monash, Moonee Valley and Stonnington are only a handful of local councils still relying on the traditional system of allocated collection dates based on location.

However, scavenging still appears to be alive and well thanks to Facebook pages that show people where items can be found all year round.

Melbourne resident Hayley is the administrator of the Facebook page Hard Rubbish Information Melbourne, created four years ago.

The page does not allow the selling of unwanted goods, but instead provides a platform for people to point out where hard rubbish can be found in their area.

Users of the page also provide information on how to restore, reuse or redistribute collected items.

Hayley said the new call-based systems were doing the environment a disservice.

“I’m not actually sure why they’ve moved to that system. It seems like they’re trying to prevent people from picking it [hard rubbish] up, but I’m not sure why they would want to prevent people from using it or redistributing it to people who need it,” Hayley said.

A spokesperson for Glen Eira City Council said their decision to move to the "at call" system was not based on scavengers.

“We found it more useful in reducing dumped rubbish, so that’s why we try to make it easy for owners to get rid of their stuff,” the spokesperson said.

But many of the items that are crushed during collection could be reused or donated to charity.

Hayley said users of Hard Rubbish Information Melbourne often collected items to donate to charities such as Bridging the Gaps, an organisation that provides items to newly settled refugees, and Saint Kilda Mums, a charity that distributes second-hand baby items to families in need.

From foosball tables to washing machines, just about anything you can think of has been put out for council collection at some point.

“You see a lot of beds, a lot of white goods and you see a lot of chests of drawers and other furniture. A lot of things that people have upgraded and then have difficulty reselling their old ones,” Hayley said.

According to the Monash City Council website, only 15-20 per cent of hard rubbish is actually recycled.

And a 2007 Monash university study found that up to 35,000 tonnes of hard waste was pilfered every year, accounting for 35 per cent of what was put out for collection.

However, leading researcher of the study Dr Ruth Lane said she believed this number had decreased since the original survey because of councils’ new systems.

“I think scavenging has always been around but it is less common with the ‘at call’ hard rubbish collections,” Dr Lane said.

Dr Lane’s study found 40 per cent of households had taken rubbish from someone else’s nature strip at some point.

“In my research I found that scavengers were responsible for recycling a much greater portion of hard rubbish than the council’s waste management contractors,” Dr Lane said.

Dr Lane said although she supported scavenging to repurpose items, she could understand why councils had issues with the practice.

“Scavenging activities often mess up the piles of hard rubbish, making it difficult for contractors to pick up what is left behind. Scavengers also take some recyclable materials that have resale value that would otherwise generate profits for the contractors,” Dr Lane said.

However Hayley said most people did not want their things to go to land fill.

“The majority of people that are putting stuff out actually really enjoy the fact that someone is going to use it," she said.

“People often put their hard rubbish out with a sign that says ‘free’ on it,” Hayley said

However there are different rules regarding the legality of taking items from council nature strips, with some councils regarding it as theft.

Monash City Council senior communications co-ordinator Joanne Robertson, said local laws against the removal of hard waste items were in place to prohibit commercial operators taking items to make a profit.

“We do not enforce the local law against residents who claim an item for reuse for their individual purposes, although we advise that people ask residents first if they can take items,” Ms Robertson said.

Discarded goods are technically seen as the property of the council once they have been placed on the nature strip.

In the past, people have been arrested for pilfering from hard rubbish piles, however there has been no successful prosecution in Victoria for the offence.

Hayley said laws against taking hard waste did not make sense environmentally.

“They’re not collecting it and neatly putting it inside [the truck] so they can redistribute it. They’re throwing it in the back of the truck, which has crushing arms that come down and crush all the stuff.

“Hard rubbish is not recycled, it’s not reclaimed, it’s not reused by the council, it’s not even resold by the council, it just goes to landfill. I have no idea why councils don’t want people to be reclaiming it, to me it seems counterproductive,” Hayley said.

Dr Lane agreed councils should be encouraging scavenging to prevent our landfills filling up.

“If they extend the life of things by keeping them in circulation, that’s a good thing.”