Former Auckland councillor Pippa Coom was delighted when the food scrap recycling bins arrived. Photo / Pippa Coom
Former Auckland councillor Pippa Coom was delighted when the food scrap recycling bins arrived. Photo / Pippa Coom
Auckland apartment owners fear masses of new green eco-friendly Auckland Council food scrap recycling bins, saying many blocks and towers simply can’t cope with the volume of them.
“If a building has 150 apartments, would the council drop off 150 bins?” asked a worried Joanna Pidgeon, a lawyer who sitson the Auckland branch of the Body Corporate Chairs Group (BCCG).
Pidgeon said the bins suited stand-alone homes, but many apartments had no room to cater for them.
Fearing an exploding green food scrap bin population, apartment chiefs put the topic on their agenda for discussion at tomorrow night’s meeting of that group.
“The design of the food scraps collection service doesn’t suit apartments and multi-unit dwellings as well as it suits suburban neighbourhoods. Council officials are keen to engage with BCCG to understand the challenges of meeting our particular needs,” the notice of meeting said.
But the council’s waste solutions general manager, Parul Sood, said it had already thought about apartments.
“For multi-unit developments with 10 or more units, assessments are being carried out. Where a service is provided, each unit receives a kitchen caddy and the development is provided with larger bins 120 litres or 240L in size, depending on the volume of food scraps generated o- site, and the storage space available. Multiple bins may be required to cater for larger sites,” Sood said.
The new green bin system is “aiming for zero waste by 2040, and keeping food scraps out of the rubbish is a great way you can help”, the council says on its website.
Apartment owners must register for site assessments but can opt out of getting the bins: “The only grounds for opting out of the charge will be after we complete a site assessment and decide we cannot provide a food scraps collection to your multi-unit development,” the council adds.
Pidgeon said introducing the food scrap bins for multi-unit and multi-use properties was a lot more complicated than stand-alone homes.
“Often, there’s just not the space for the extra bins. You don’t want 200 little bins. We’d prefer a few bigger ones.”
Food scrap bins: How do apartment owners cope? Photo / George Novak
Every building with apartments has a separate assessment, although Pidgeon’s apartment building in the CBD doesn’t have the bins because the council is yet to examine it, she said.
Apartment owners fear they’ll still be charged $77.20 a year, but might not be able to get the little green bins because they’ll have no room for them.
“The system is set up for individual homeowners, but not multi-unit complexes. People want to do the right thing, but it’s harder adapting it for apartment buildings.”
Space is at a premium in apartments with dedicated storage areas for recycling and rubbish bins, she said.
Feedback about the bins from others has been positive. For example, former Auckland councillor Pippa Coom welcomed their delivery, posting on social media: “Exciting day. The food scrap bins have arrived in the ‘hood. For those in Central Auckland, the service starts from September 4. Yay!”
There have been complaints over smells with the collection, but the council info booklet advises freezing the waste before binning it.
There have also been positive comments on social media from people who like the new system.
A Herald editorial on September 20 said the city’s distribution of the bins began earlier in the year in Waitākere and on the North Shore.
Then, residents in central areas got bin kits, followed by people in Manukau, Rodney and Franklin, and the distribution was due to wind up this month.
Papakura was the trial area for Auckland and has had a food waste collection process for five years. The council is hoping to drastically cut the amount of food waste sent to landfill. Other such collections are occurring in cities and towns around the country.
Some people might wonder what the point of separating out their food waste from general rubbish and items to be recycled is. It probably feels like an unnecessary extra and unwanted task to some.
But it is a massive global problem, with a third of all food estimated to go uneaten, even as hunger is also a worldwide challenge. Some 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste, the editorial said.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
