Our goals were, and still are, to provide a high level of customer service and give the community a choice in how they deal with their green waste. 

We employ local and recycle locally, which keeps our carbon footprint lower.

Initially, we consulted the City of Greater Bendigo to ensure they were not about to introduce green waste collection to the city. 

The council assured us their research showed it would not be viable for them to commence this service.

Our initiative has seen huge savings in landfill costs, as the amount of green waste going to landfill has decreased as more ratepayers each year have taken up the Greenaway Bins service.

Greenaway Bins are very proud of the positive influence their marketing and promotion of the company has had on the community and particularly their wonderful customers who are passionate about the environment.

We would like to acknowledge the encouragement of Greenaway Bins customers for posting the petition on Change.org. 

Their testimonials are a validation of the esteem in which the Greenaway Bins team is held and a salute to the customer service we offer.

Local business is valued by the ratepayers of the Bendigo community. 

“I support local business, what will our children do for work in years to come if the almighty dollar is always our deciding factor, buy local, keep locals in jobs” Ryan Boyd said on Change.org.

Councillor Peter Cox is quoted (Bendigo Advertiser, August 17) as saying “he doubted whether Greenaway Bins had the capacity to handle a dramatic increase in waste products to be processed”.

We respond to this statement by saying we have grown the business from nothing to where it is today and we are prepared and able to expand to meet demand.

We have already expanded to the Castlemaine and Maldon areas.  

It is disappointing that Greenaway Bins was not included in council’s waste management discussions. 

We have consistently initiated discussions with the CoGB Waste Management Unit; they have at no time been proactive in discussions with us.

We are continuing to provide a service to our customers and the Bendigo ratepayers.

A new report shows that funding for vocational education and training across all levels of government dropped in 2013-14 by 7 per cent.

Vocational education and training is in trouble. State and federal governments urgently need to fix the structural causes.

The Council of Australian Governments’ agreement on vocational education and training, which allows hundreds of millions of public dollars to flow to private for-profit providers, needs to be overhauled.

State governments have criticised the contestability model, yet the Abbott government is sticking to this agreement which is failing the sector.

Apprentices have also been shafted by the Coalition government which with the support of federal Labor took away a $5500 grant for apprentices and replaced it with a possible debt of up to $20,000.

The Greens are calling for a federally driven re-write of the vocational education and training funding system to see TAFE prioritised and subsidies to private providers wound back as an urgently needed starting point.