Bulky waste in condos: how MCSTs and managing agents can handle it

Why the pile keeps coming back

Residents often leave bulky items at the bin centre because they assume it’s where rubbish goes, and nobody has told them otherwise. The refuse contractor then takes the bagged household waste and leaves the sofa if bulky items aren’t in its contract. One item left for a week tells everyone else it’s allowed, and the pile grows.

The cost lands on every owner. Someone has to arrange and pay for the removal, and that usually comes out of the management fund.

Check what your contracts already cover

Before you write any rules, find out what you’re already paying for. Three contracts matter:

• Refuse collection. Whether bulky items, renovation debris or garden waste are included, and at what extra charge if not. Whoever collects has to be a waste collector licensed by NEA, because anyone producing waste in Singapore must use one. For bulky items in private estates, NEA’s own advice is to use the estate’s public waste collector, for a separate fee, or any licensed collector.
• Cleaning. Whether the cleaners are expected to move dumped items, and where to.
• Managing agent. Whether arranging ad hoc removals is part of the agent’s scope, and how it’s approved and paid for.

If none of them covers bulky items, that gap is why the pile keeps coming back. Close it with a standing arrangement or a clear process for one-off removals, rather than paying for emergency clear-outs a few times a year.

Give residents a process they can follow

A rule only works if people know what to do instead. The process residents need is short:

1. Arrange the removal

   With a disposal contractor of their choice, or through the management office if the MCST offers an arrangement.

2. Tell the management office first

   So the service lift and loading bay can be booked, and the lift protected if the item is large.

3. Take it away on the day

   Nothing waits in the bin centre, corridor or car park for collection. Until the removal, the item stays in the unit.

Put it where people will see it: the lift lobbies, the noticeboard, the welcome pack for new residents, and whatever app or messaging channel the estate uses. Our notice templates have the wording ready to adapt.

Make renovation debris the contractor’s job

Renovation waste is the one kind of bulky waste you can control before it exists. Make its removal a condition of the renovation approval: debris goes out with the contractor, on the day, and never into the bin centre. If your development takes a renovation deposit, tying part of its refund to a clean bin centre and loading bay gives the condition some force.

When items are already dumped

For things left in the bin centre or common areas, follow a notice-and-wait process rather than simply removing them: photograph them, post a dated notice, give the owner time to claim them, and record what you did. It’s fairer, and it’s far easier to defend if an owner complains. Our guide to items left in corridors and common areas sets the process out step by step.

Two points of law are worth knowing first. Neither the Building (Strata Management) Act nor the prescribed by-laws gives an MCST an explicit power to remove or dispose of things left on common property, so there’s no statutory notice period to follow. And recovering the cost from the resident is much easier with a by-law that provides for it. BCA’s guide to by-laws includes a sample additional by-law letting an MCST charge up to S$200 to recover the cost of cleaning up or removing items such as a discarded sofa. It only applies once your council has passed it by special resolution and lodged it.

When a one-off clear makes sense

Sometimes the backlog is simply too big for a notice process: a storeroom nobody has opened in years, the end of a renovation season, or a bin centre that has been neglected. In that case a single clear-out, followed straight away by the published process, gives the estate a clean start. Ask for a certificate of disposal, so the council can show owners what was removed and what it cost.