User-pays and bins in revamp for rubbish

The initial target is to reduce kerbside waste by 30 per cent per person. Photo / APN

Standardising Auckland Council's rubbish disposal, including wheelie bins and user-pays for all, is being urged by a committee that has sifted through 2000 submissions from residents and the waste and recycling industry.

The committee yesterday decided that because 64 per cent of submissions supported the main changes of a draft waste management and minimisation plan, they should be put to the governing body for adoption.

Committee chairman Councillor Noelene Raffills said the target was to reduce domestic kerbside waste to landfill by 30 per cent per person within three years of the changes taking effect from 2015.

Replacing bags with wheelie bins for kerbside collection will mean a standard charge for each time a bin is emptied. Bins will have bar codes, and be priced according to capacity.

Forty-five per cent of the region already pays per bag collected. The rest pay for collection through their rates or rents.

Committee member Richard Northey said user-pays, which would be new to Manukau, could hurt tenants and some large families.

He wants the council to work with the Ministry of Social Development, Housing New Zealand and the Property Investors' Association on an advice and education campaign over the next three years on how to help tenants cut down what they throw out.

Housing New Zealand has 30,000 tenants in Auckland.

The committee said a mix of bags and bins could be used in rural areas and on Waiheke and Great Barrier.

The council would help find a solution for householders where it was impractical to put a bin out on the street, possibly by having drop-off areas.

Town neighbours could help by putting bins out for those who could not manage it, and with this in mind the smallest bin should be 60 litres instead of 80 litres as previously suggested.

If a household collection for kitchen and garden waste comes in as proposed, it will probably be collected fortnightly instead of weekly as in the draft plan.

This would significantly reduce the cost but bins might be smelly by collection day.

Another committee member, Ann Hartley said 71 per cent of Aucklanders surveyed last year preferred bins for household rubbish.

But Devonport-Takapuna Local Board member Jan O'Connor said the committee's decision would anger those North Shore and Waitakere residents who happily used bags and paid as they went.

"The committee has ignored a petition signed by 715 people at a meeting who asked they keep their bags," she said.

"People on the Shore are angry about losing their pre-paid bags introduced 20 years ago and which have cut the volume of rubbish to landfill."

Council environment and sustainability committee chairman Wayne Walker said that charging for each bin of rubbish gave a financial incentive to recycle and divert food and garden waste from rubbish bins.

"The average bag put out is 40 per cent food waste and 10 per cent garden waste and in my view we should be striving to capture all of this."

FROM 2015 ...

* User-pays for all household rubbish collections.
* Wheelie bins replace pre-paid bags in urban area.
* Mix of bags and bins in rural areas, Waiheke and Great Barrier Islands.
* Choice of bin sizes from 60 litres to 240 litres.
* Household recycle collection fortnightly, optional bin size, paid from rates.
* Household organic (green waste) collection, paid from rates.
* Inorganic collection for all who book, paid from rates.