The red bin lid says stop before you toss your trash

It's time for Auckland City residents to get their rubbish sorted out. MATHEW DEARNALEY looks at life without big green wheelie-bins.

Doug Astley was a cheerleader for the green garbage-gobblers when they rolled into Mt Roskill in 1989, before spreading to the rest of the Auckland City Council area three years later.

He welcomed the 240-litre wheelie-bins as a way of discouraging vermin and backyard fires, and still thinks they were right for the times - before kerbside recycling and inorganic rubbish collections.

But today, the council works chairman and former Mt Roskill borough councillor is thinking of going into worm farming in a war against waste.

He accepts that installing a bin full of wrigglers to eat kitchen scraps from his two-person household will not make a visible dent in the region's 938,000-tonne annual waste mountain.

Such home efforts are on a different scale entirely from a Tauranga operation, which is using 230 million worms supplied from an army of growers to chomp through and cleanse Te Puke's sewage wastes and to polish off unwanted byproducts from several abattoirs.

But Auckland city ratepayers are deemed the country's most prolific waste producers, so it seems every bit counts.

The main talking point is the half-sized 120-litre green wheelie-bins with red tops being distributed to the city's 127,000 households and thousands of businesses, supplanting the 240-litre beasts used until now to swallow virtually everything, even the odd kitchen sink.

Red is for stop, challenging habitual biffers-out to think again before they squander what could be turned into valuable resources.

But Auckland city residents have become very attached to the out-of-sight, out-of-mind convenience of their garbage-guzzlers, and one environmentalist says the council was left with no alternative than to apply a "tough love" cure to a problem spiralling out of control.

How much do Aucklander city residents chuck out each year?

Auckland city's wastes soared 30 per cent in the five years to 1996, when its population rose by a more measured 13 per cent, to 345,768 residents.

In 1996-97, Auckland city ratepayers threw away 380,000 tonnes, of which three-quarters was from businesses. Latest council figures put the amount collected from households at about 115,000 tonnes.

Auckland city staff say more waste per person is produced by its residents than by any other New Zealanders, even allowing for greater population and business density.

The Auckland regional refuse pile tapered off last year, but that was because of a reduction in special waste such as from cleaning up contaminated oil storage or food processing sites.

Overall regional waste totalled 37,941 tonnes, compared with 992,000 in 1998-99, and a national total of 3.2 million tonnes.

But general refuse increased by 2.2 per cent against a 35.7 per cent fall in special waste, which requires careful treatment before being sent to landfills or, in limited cases, incinerated.

By the late 1990s, the Auckland region was tossing out about 2.3kg of waste daily for each of its 1.127 million inhabitants. The Auckland city average was 2.9kg and the national figure 2.1kg.

True to its eco-city name, Waitakere got its figure down to 1.64kg after introducing a mainly user-pays refuse bag collection system.

Meanwhile, two of the region's four big landfills, Rosedale in North Shore City and Greenmount in East Tamaki, are about to close while their operator awaits court decisions on appeals against a controversial super-dump planned near Te Kauwhata in Waikato.

What do Auckland city residents throw away and how much is recycled?

The Auckland City Council says 25 per cent of the 115,000 tonnes thrown into wheelie-bins annually is paper that could be recycled. Another 49 per cent is garden rubbish and food scraps that could be composted or fed to worms. Plastic materials make up 9 per cent and glass and metals 4 per cent each.

Yet only 8500 tonnes of separated glass, metals and plastic and about 10,000 tonnes of paper are collected from kerbsides for recycling each year. There is also huge scope for recycling by businesses.

How much do neighbouring cities throw out, and what do they recycle?

North Shore City was the first local authority to introduce kerbside recycling, in 1990. Waste team leader Judy Mulcahy says 15,000 tonnes of materials, including paper, are collected for recycling annually against 21,000 tonnes of rubbish taken by council contractors.

But she notes that the council's user-pays refuse system costing householders $1.30 for each rubbish bag has drawn competition from independent contractors as well as encouraging recycling.

The latest regional refuse survey, in 1998, counted 38,600 tonnes of domestic rubbish from North Shore's total waste of 92,863 tonnes.

Waitakere City collects 20,000 tonnes of rubbish in largely user-pays bags costing $1 each, but receives 124,000 tonnes, including material from outside its territory, at its Henderson refuse transfer station.

Waste business unit manager Jon Roscoe says 34,000 tonnes is removed for recycling or composting.

A revolutionary new vertical composting unit invented by New Zealanders and paid for by Perry Waste Services of Hamilton for $2 million has an air consent to process 7550 tonnes of garden waste a year.

The Waitakere City Council is preparing a consent application to the Auckland Regional Council for Perry to compost food wastes there as well, because of their higher nutrient content and the unit's ability to operate without venting foul odours.

Timber is also salvaged from the waste pile, furniture is restored on site, and non-leaching concrete and bricks are removed to an adjacent cleanfill area.

Manukau City has yet to assess how much a long-awaited kerbside recycling scheme launched in April is cutting into its 190,000-tonne annual refuse heap, but contractors had to work 14 to 15 hours a day to service an initial demand.

What are the prospects for the recycling industry?

Recycling has become big business. A 1998 survey of the Auckland regional recycling industry found 64 firms employing 1736 people with an annual turnover of $132 million from collecting 641,649 tonnes of material for reuse or recycling.

One of the largest volumes is the up to 40,000 tonnes of garden waste turned into compost annually by Living Earth, a company half-owned by landfill operator Waste Management NZ.

Paper, glass and metals have strong local markets for recycling, and plastics are coming into their own after having to be stockpiled for want of stable demand.

A joint venture partner of Auckland and Manukau recycling contractor Street Smart is about to export about 600 tonnes of plastic soft-drink bottles a year to Coca-Cola Amatil in Australia.

The company also grinds up bottles for export to Chinese garment-makers, who turn them into polyester fabrics.

Some local manufacturers who have found a raft of weird and wonderful uses for used plastics are complaining of an under-supply of plastic milk bottles because of strong export price competition.

Vertex-Pacific, formerly Carter Holt Harvey's plastics division, turns more than 200 tonnes of used milk bottles into products such as culvert pipes, buckets, jerry-cans and even the 45-litre recycling bins adorning Auckland and Manukau back porches.

What changes are Auckland City ratepayers facing?

New rubbish and recycling services are due to start on Monday, when there will be no more collections of general rubbish from 240-litre bins.

Householders are allowed to keep their old wheelies for the disposal of garden wastes by private collectors if they so choose, to end up at Living Earth's composting plant at Pikes Pt, Onehunga.

The new 120-litre bins should no longer be used for garden rubbish, although a bylaw to enforce this is some months away. Food scraps can be put into them if unable to be composted on site. No provision has been made for specific kerbside collections of food scraps.

Each rateable property will be allowed up to three 45-litre blue recycling bins, and is being given coupons to pay for either six garden waste collections a year, or discounts on composting or worm bins.

The council is receiving more than 1000 requests a day for blue bins, meaning a two-day waiting period promised a fortnight ago has become three or four weeks.

But it says its recycling contractor, Street Smart, will collect approved materials left outside properties in similar-sized containers, such as cardboard boxes, until more bins are distributed.

Another little-publicised change is to the rubbish collection days, which are posted on strips of sticky tape attached to the newly delivered 120-litre bins.

Although some Aucklanders may feel hard done by, waste recovery operator Peter Thorne of Paper Reclaim notes that the average four-member New Zealand household uses about 1 1/2 rubbish bags a week to a total capacity of 82.5 litres.

Aucklanders are being allowed up to 255 litres if they take the trouble to separate their recyclable materials into three 45-litre bins "so it could still be argued that Auckland City Council is offering far too much."

But multiple households sharing single land titles will have to buy more bins and associated services for each extra home or flat at $185 each.

Mr Thorne says that while some people think recycling creates extra costs, a 45-litre recycling bin can be handled for 25c a week compared with at least $1 for taking a rubbish bag to a landfill.

What will be allowed in the blue bins?

Glass bottles and jars, their lids removed; aluminium and tin cans, with any sharp edges safely pushed inside; plastic milk and soft drink bottles, squashed and with their lids removed; any other containers labelled on their bottoms or sides as grade 1, 2 or 5 plastics.

Mr Astley is pleased Auckland will become the first city to recycle grade 5 plastics, which include ice cream, margarine and yoghurt containers.

How can the coupons be redeemed?

Each rateable property should by now have been sent six coupons entitling it to six free garden-waste collections a year, from a choice of seven council-registered collectors.

All six coupons must be offered to the preferred operator from the outset, and extra collections will be charged for.

Otherwise, they can redeemed against most of the fee for dropping off a trailerload of garden waste at Living Earth's Pike Pt composting operation, or used to get discounts on composting or worm farm bins through approved garden centres and hardware stores.

Most retailers offer a discount of $2.80 for each coupon - a total of $16.80 - although The Warehouse is knocking off just $15 for six coupons for the lowest-priced worm bin on the market, at $30.

What public reaction has the council prepared for, and what does it hope to achieve?

The Auckland City council is heartened by a three-month trial of the new system last year on 320 homes in five parts of Auckland, which it says reduced the amount of rubbish sent to landfills by about 45 per cent with no noticeable rise in illegal dumping.

This compares with an isthmus-wide target of cutting landfill waste by 50 per cent by 2003 and by 80 per cent by 2010.

Mr Astley is fond of citing the case of a 14-member family who managed to squash their unusable rubbish into a 120-litre bin, despite thinking this impossible before taking tips from a waste consultant.

* Find out more about recycling or composting by phoning council advisers on 379-1350. If you remain unclear about how you can do your bit, ask for a free house call from next week from one of a team of 12 council "waste doctors."