Matt Cutler has been advising students to put out low-cost, unmarked rubbish bags for collection, rather than the official DCC rubbish bags.
“[...] With rubbish just put it in low cost bags at night - there’s collection every week day in the city. Just don’t put your mail in the bag so they don’t know who’s rubbish it is,” Cutler wrote in a text to his tenant, Oscar. Critic recieved a screenshot of that text.
“It’s littering,” said an employee of the Dunedin City Council. The employee said that the DCC “will not pick [unmarked rubbish bags] up… [it] doesn’t cover the cost of the service.”
“My impression is that it's a bit of an open secret in town that everyone just dumps stuff on the street,” said Oscar, the tenant who received the text. “Our neighbours collected a massive trash pile outside their flat, property manager (not Cutlers) told them to deal with it, they just took the whole pile down to the sidewalk and the Council took it away.”
“It's gross that Dunedin property managers are encouraging students to do this stuff, but rubbish bags are really expensive to buy,” Oscar said. “Like I think lots of students would use non-official bags even without being told so by their property manager.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” Matt Cutler told Critic over the phone, after failing to respond to two emails about the text message.
“Advising students directly against using DCC rubbish bags isn’t illegal, but it’s shady as,” said OUSA’s Residential Representative, Jack Saunders. “It’s really annoying to see rental agents and property managers offering this advice instead of giving the best advice possible, as some people won’t know how to get the actual DCC bags or sort out a red bin.”
“If the DCC won’t collect the black bags, then potentially Cutlers may be actively contributing to rubbish on the streets …” Jack said.
“Check out the wheelie bins available on [the EnviroWaste website] you can order a red wheelie bin for a couple dollars between the flat per month, which often works out cheaper than DCC rubbish bags depending on the size of your flat.”