Marty Sharpe The increasing cost of recycling glass may be passed on to ratepayers, says Hawke's Bay's waste minimisation officer Dominic Salmon. New Zealand's only glass recycling company, ACI Glass Packaging in Auckland, will reduce the amount it pays for clear glass waste from $75 to $10 a tonne as of May1. Until December last year ACI was paying $92 a tonne. "We're assessing the impacts and factors of what may influence us from here. The contract is a partnership and it's not in our interest to drive the contractor to the wall, especially when this has been caused by outside influences," Mr Salmon said. "There are no figures at this point. The average household pays about $16 a year for kerbside recycling. In Hastings each property pays just 24.6 cents a week for recycling. It's not much, about the price of an apple a week. We have to go to council to see whether this would need changing," he said. "If we said 'we're going to stop recycling clear glass' it would undo all that we've done in the past ten years. If it came to it there are various options we're investigating just so we've got something up our sleeve. But I don't see it coming to that," Mr Salmon said. Overseas, recycled glass was turned into asphalt or sand, he said. "It's been such a stable price for the last 15 years. This came completely out of the blue," he said. All Brite, which is Hawke's Bay's largest recycling company, collects 300 tonne of glass waste from Hawke's Bay each month. All Brite's managing director Tim Combs said the reduction was unlikely to have any immediate effect but may result in increased council funding in future. Mr Combs said $92 a tonne was not enough to cover costs and without council funding the operation would not be viable. "If we'd relied on $92 it would have been unsustainable," he said. Mr Combs said the Ministry for the Environment was working with industries using glass, and possibly setting up a fund by industry that could be accessed by councils or collectors for recycling initiatives.
