Glass recycling works but we all must do our part - Sonya Bateson

It's not what we're drinking, but how we're recycling. Photo / George Novak

OPINION

I’m not much of a drinker.

Anything more than two bottles of beer gives me a splitting headache and I’m basically unable to function for 24 hours.

It’s one of the many wonderful (heavy sarcasm) perks of being a mum in her 30s, along with the incredible superpowers of being able to gain 2kg by looking at a chocolate bar and managing to clog up showers, vacuum nozzles and washing machines with hair while somehow still having a full head of the stuff. So wonderful.

It’s not the end of the world, but I do miss the days when my husband and I would travel to wineries in Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, and Wairarapa and spend the entire day sampling pinot noir and riesling without breaking a sweat.

Let me tell you what, though, it’s amazing how much glass you can accumulate while drinking no more than two beers a night during the silly season. Although, I suppose the jars of relishes, pickles, and olives do help bump up that number.

The amount of glass in our blue crate last week was rather impressive if I do say so myself. Especially for the always-tired parents of a preschooler.

It was overshadowed by some of the other homes I’ve noticed, though. Man, some people can really put it away.

I saw one crate by the roadside filled to the brim with empty bottles of a particularly fancy Martinborough red – that’s one expensive New Year’s party. In this economy, too, you high rollers.

Speaking of the blue crates, how many of us were woken by glass clinking against glass on New Year’s Day morning as late-night revellers disposed of their empties? That sound was the backing track for my day as people cleared up the remains of their New Year’s partying.

The full set of rubbish, recycling, green waste (optional), glass and foodscraps bins in use in Tauranga. Photo / George Novak

It’s a noise I find oddly satisfying. It’s an audible sign that Tauranga’s and Western Bay’s new-ish kerbside recycling system is working.

For those readers who don’t live in my neck of the woods, the western districts in the Bay of Plenty have only had a full set of council wheelie bins since July 2021. Separate glass crates arrived in Tauranga a little earlier, in 2018.

I know, I know, we can be slow to get with the times here. Insert joke about our ageing population here.

Rotorua began these services in 2016. Heck, my hometown of Whakatāne had council wheelie bins in ye olden times when I was a child.

I remember moving to Rotorua in the early 2010s and then to Tauranga a few years after that and seeing all the paper (Rotorua) and black plastic (Tauranga) rubbish sacks lying on the side of the road, many of which had been torn open by animals that had strewn household waste all over the public areas.

It was primitive and, frankly, revolting.

Thankfully, we’re past that now and have moved on to more … civilised forms of waste collection.

However, that decision was not without controversy. Something about losing our rights to choose our own services? Or it being an expensive waste of time?

Regardless, the proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Just over a year after the new services started in Tauranga, the council said we had almost halved the amount of waste going to landfill. That’s impressive.

But, according to a Bay of Plenty Times article on January 1, more than a fifth of Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty kerbside recycling is still estimated to end up in landfill. And some of that 20-odd per cent is likely due to contaminated products being tossed in our recycling bins.

Anything that goes into home recycling bins needs to be clean, empty, lids off (and small lids thrown away), and with no staples, tape or binding attached.

And no, there’s no one with the job of washing the recycling. If it’s dirty, that item and any others that may also have been contaminated by it go straight to landfill, according to waste minimalisation advocate Kate Fenwick.

It’s on all of us, as responsible citizens of this gorgeous country we call home, to take care of our own waste. We paid for it, it’s up to us to get rid of it the right way.

Ensuring our country is clean and green is a shared responsibility.

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.