Changes to rubbish collecting
Rubbish and recycling collections are changing throughout the Waikato.
On the less is more principle, Waikato District Council is introducing measures to encourage reducing, re-using and recycling.
Each year Waikato communities unnecessarily dump a costly 35,000 tonnes of refuse in landfills.
But a whopping 64% or 23,000 tonnes of dumped rubbish doesn’t need to be and could be put to better use, the council says.
From July 1, the council will be introducing new refuse and recycling services, which will include pre-paid rubbish bag stickers.
The Less Waste Saves More Campaign is designed to raise awareness of how everyone can make a difference by reducing their waste.
Council Waste minimisation officer Pat Cronin said there will be savings for people who reduce the amount of waste they put in their refuse bags. “Each bag will require a pre-paid sticker and wheelie bins will be collected on a pay per lift basis. The less refuse we put out the more money saved.”
There are also indirect savings, too, because the less waste the district produces the more natural resources are saved.
“We know people are becoming more aware of how important it is to reduce their waste, recycle more and find better ways to reuse stuff they no longer need. We’ll be providing more information over the coming weeks about the new service and how to reduce, reuse and recycle,” Cronin said.
• We send 509kg of waste to landfill per person per year.
• The changes in service will reduce this to 338kg per person per year, a reduction of 33% in waste to landfill per person by 2022.
• 64% of what we throw away can be diverted from landfill as follows: 22% is recyclable; 37% is food waste and 5% is garden waste, which can be put to a better use, such as composting
• Recycling one tonne of paper saves 17 trees and 7500 litres of water
• Each average-sized tree provides an estimated $10 savings in annual environmental benefits, including energy conservation and reduced pollution.
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This is an absolute disgrace – we pay thousands in rates and what do we get????? Nothing, no sewage, no street lighting, no water, and now no rubbish collection!! I am now in an angry mood!!!
What the article doesn’t say is that all the rubbish that you do have to put out is going to cost you money over and above the rates we already pay that have up till now been covering the cost of rubbish collection. The whole project might be looked on more favourably if the amount we currently pay for rubbish collection was removed from next years rates and replaced in the budget by the income from the blue stickers we have to buy. Then you would actually be saving money by reducing the amount of rubbish you put out.
And maybe the council could start recycling the softer/flexible pastics as well as the hard ones? In Palmerston North all plastic is collected with the recycling.
Oh goodie so even more rubbish will be dumped at our rest areas and on the side of our country roads!! Also farmers will go back to digging rubbish holes on their farms. What a dumb idea WDC