Vandals setting bins on fire could be costing the Dundee taxpayer thousands of pounds every year.
Councillor Jimmy Black said council tax was being “burnt away” by people deliberately setting bins on fire in the city.
The SNP member said that a bin costs around £40 and that the local authority could be forking out more than £5,000 a year to replace fire-damaged wheelie bins.
His comments came at a meeting of the council’s policy and resources committee where fire chief Colin Grieve revealed that 49 bins had been set alight in the last three months.
Mr Black said: “My colleague Craig Melville, the environment convener, tells me that these bins cost about £40.
“That would mean the cost of replacing these damaged bins would sit at £5,280.
“That is a quite meaningful cost of fires. People are literally burning away their council tax.”
Refuse fires accounted for 69 of the 124 deliberately set secondary fires in Dundee over the last three months.
Of those, 33 were fires in wheelie bins set alight, while the remaining fires were in various sizes of refuse containers and skips. There were a total of 580 deliberate secondary fires in Dundee over the last year, which sits below the five-year average of 580.
In a report to councillors, Mr Grieve said: “A number of initiatives have been undertaken to reduce these incidents and local managers have been working closely with the police and other partners to address this matter.
“Intelligence is shared regularly as part of the multi-agency tasking and coordinating meetings and also the fire-related anti-social behaviour group where discussions have led to a number of actions being taken to address this issue.”