News

Rubbish day – now where’s that sticker?

The new era of less waste is here – with double the recycling bins and direct payment for rubbish bags.

The new system came into effect on Friday July 1. Every rubbish bag now needs a pre-paid blue sticker.

The stickers sell for $1.50 but retailers can charge more than that.

They can be bought at supermarkets and other retailers – for the full list click here. (The Gordonton Superette – 1038 Gordonton Road, sells them.)

The aim is reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill in the Waikato district.

At the same time as residents pay per bag their targeted rates for rubbish have been reduced – from $213.36 to $127.83 per year.

The money from the stickers will cover the cost of production and distribution with the balance going toward the collection costs that are not fully recovered in the rates charges, said the Waikato District Council.

Recycling expands
A growing number of items can go into the two recycling bins per household from an expanded range of plastic – number 5 type plastic has been added to numbers 1 and 2 – to pizza boxes (cleaned) and aerosol cans.

“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,” said council waste minimisation officer Pat Cronin.

• 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

July 1 also marks the start of Plastic Free July, a campaign to raise awareness of the problems and amount of single-use, disposable plastic in our lives.