Robyn Malcolm stars in rubbish video

Actress Robyn Malcolm is the public face of a council education campaign to cut the amount of waste going to landfill. Photo / Supplied

As star of Outrageous Fortune, Robyn Malcolm was Queen of the West but the feisty actor has now become Queen of the Waste.

Challenging Aucklanders to "get our rubbish sorted", Malcolm presents a short video on the Auckland Council website as the face of its $200,000 education campaign for the draft waste management and minimisation plan.

With a leafy backyard as a set and three prototype wheelie bins as stage props, Malcolm wears her familiar Westie black T-shirt but this time it is imprinted with I love Auckland.

"Where do you think our rubbish goes?" she asked.

"For a lot of people, this simply disappears when you throw it into a bin. But guess what? It doesn't."

The video switches to her in a high-vis jacket at a city landfill.

"Landfills are big because we keep throwing so much stuff away," she said.

Then she pulls out her rubbish facts.

Each year the average Aucklander puts out 160kg of general rubbish at the kerbside, or 24 full bags - "that's enough thrown away to cover Eden Park to twice the height of the Sky Tower."

Each year, the region's kerbside rubbish contains 25,000 tonnes of recyclables, 74,000 tonnes of food waste and 23,000 tonnes of green or garden waste.

Malcolm said Auckland had a "mixed up" system where some put rubbish out in bags, some in wheelie bins and some in crates.

Half of the region's households paid for collection when they bought a bag and the other half paid through their council rates - no matter how much or how little they put out.

Malcolm described a three-bin system for each household with a bin for general rubbish, a bin for recyclables and another bin for food and green waste. Households could choose what size they wanted.

But with it came "disposer-pays".

The bins would have a barcode and householders would pay per lift and according to bin volume.

Malcolm said the council campaign was aimed at achieving a 30 per cent reduction of waste to landfill by 2018.

Councillor Cameron Brewer took issue with Malcolm taking part in the 10-week campaign.

He said her criticism of Prime Minister John Key during the election campaign made her an inappropriate choice and would make the council look left-wing politically.

At a Green Party launch, Malcolm said the Prime Minister had an "unshakeable and abiding love of fossil fuels".

Submissions on the draft plan can be made online as well as by post and close on January 31.