Council's recycling teething issues: three bins per house, one truck per bin

Napier's new recycling contractors, Smart Environmental. Photo / Napier City Council

Napier City Council has started its new recycling service without a purpose-built fleet of trucks, and says teething issues with the service are inevitable.

The council is pleading for patience as the new service, which began on Friday, settles.

Residents now have three different crates - one each for paper, glass and plastic and cans - and a weekly (rather than fortnightly) service.

Currently, three trucks are turning up on recycling day - one truck per crate.

The council says this is temporary - they are aiming to have their first multi-purpose truck on the road later this month, but it is a work in progress.

Bayview resident Andrew Robertson told Hawke's Bay Today it was 5pm before he was able to bring all his crates back inside on Friday.

He said one truck arrived at about midday, and picked up the paper crate, the next truck arrived around mid-afternoon and collected glass, and it was almost 5pm before a truck arrived to pick up the plastics and cans crate.

"I would like to praise NCC for their efforts to improve recycling, but I cannot.

"Recycling is supposed to assist in reducing our carbon footprint by reusing and reprocessing items that would otherwise increase the rubbish landfill.

"How is it an improvement when costing more ecologically, plus wages for three drivers?"

Napier City Council's environmental service manager Cameron Burton said the current fleet of trucks was temporary, while its purpose-built fleet was completed.

"Due to the very quick turnaround in developing this contract, going out to public tender, evaluating tenders, awarding the contract, agreeing to terms etc, it is not physically possible to have a purpose-built new fleet constructed and road-tested in that time."

He said the old trucks, which had three compartments, had meant more trips to the depot, as it had to return each time one of the sections filled up.

While the exact cost of the new operation is commercially sensitive, he said the new operation is slightly cheaper than the fortnightly service.

He said residents are asked to put their recycling out by 7am as that is when collection starts.

"Remember this is a brand new service, with brand new operators, and brand new staff.

"Learning the whereabouts of every one of our 24,436 addresses that are being serviced is a big challenge."

On the first day of collection, two streets were missed, one of which had its recycling collected at 5.30pm, the other of which had its recycling collected the next collection day.

"It is also worth noting that the new contractor will be working hard to optimise the route that they follow on each collection day.

"In this regard they are likely to drive a different route than the previous contractor and therefore collect streets at a different time of the day than the previous contractor."