Victory in the war against waste

By SIMON COLLINS

When the Opotiki District Council announced the site of the town's new tip, public reaction was swift.

Within two days, in a district of 9500 people, 1700 signatures were gathered on a petition against it.

So the council changed its mind.

But that created another problem, because there was nowhere else to go.

Works manager Ian Castles says the proposed site was the only suitable one close enough to town.

The existing tip was almost full and is due to close next July.

"So we adopted the Zero Waste programme and started recycling," he says.

Since that decision in 1999, necessity has made Opotiki's residents the country's recycling champions.

They have slashed the amount of rubbish going to the tip from 10,000 tonnes a year to 1200 - an 88 per cent reduction.


How have they done it? Measures included:

* Each house was given a 45-litre recycling bin and 52 small plastic bags for rubbish.

* Three "resource recovery centres" were opened at Opotiki, Te Kaha and Waihau Bay. A carload of recyclables is charged $2; non-recyclables are $6.

* All plastic is taken for recycling.

* Timber not good enough to reuse is given to pensioners for firewood.

* Broken concrete is given to farmers for drainage and river protection.

* Electrical and electronic gear is mined for valuable bits and the rest is baled and sent to Singapore for recycling.

* Old cars are baled and collected by scrap-metal dealers.

* A contractor is paid to collect and compost garden waste.

The council collects $70,000 a year in fees at the resource recovery centres, and the net cost to ratepayers is unchanged from 1999 at around $300,000.

Opotiki is not the only place where people will no longer tolerate new rubbish dumps.

Northland now trucks rubbish to the Redvale tip near Albany to avoid starting a new dump further north.

South of Auckland, Te Kauwhata residents Wendy Finlayson and Brenda Maxwell have had letters from Envirowaste threatening them with bankruptcy unless they each pay $30,000 towards the company's legal costs incurred in fighting their appeal against a new 87ha tip due to open 500m from the Waikato River in 2008.

"Auckland is not getting rid of the rubbish problem by sending it here," she says. "They are just leaving the problem for future generations."

The Warehouse's environmental manager, Richard Morley-Hall, says Canterbury councils want to spend $25 million on "a hole in the ground" for a new tip on a similar scale to the Te Kauwhata one.

Yet he believes that almost all of the material destined for the tip could be recycled for the same cost or less.

Some examples:

Food and garden wastes (50 per cent of household rubbish)

A trial at Bayswater on the North Shore is showing how organic rubbish can be collected for recycling.

Mr Morley-Hall says vertical compost units, exported around the world by Auckland's VCU Technology, "can take anything organic from pizza boxes to sewage sludge, animal carcasses to cabbage trees", and turn them into compost.

Paper (19 per cent)

The Ministry for the Environment says more than 90 per cent of New Zealanders now have access to recycling for standard items such as paper, glass and cans, although in many places this requires a trip to a recycling depot. But many homes still do not have separate boxes for scrap paper, and only half New Zealand's paper is recycled.

Building materials (10 per cent)

Resource Efficiency in Building and Related Industries has a list on its target="new">website of businesses which recycle timber, concrete and other materials.

Plastic (7 per cent)

Plastic bags and "hard" plastic such as foam meat trays and icecream cartons are not collected by most kerbside contractors, so only 18 per cent of our plastics are recycled.

But Bob Lye, of Auckland's Ark Recycling, is looking at building a plant using new techniques to melt down hard plastic for recycling into products such as coat-hangers.

Metals (6 per cent)

Seventy per cent of aluminium drink cans are recycled because collectors pay about 1c a can for them. But only 31 per cent of steel cans come back. Steel Can Recycling manager Bruce Gledhill says some collecting contractors have been reluctant to pick up paint cans or large olive oil cans, but councils are gradually renegotiating contracts to include these items.

Glass (3 per cent)

Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons says that when she set up a recycling scheme in Devonport in 1976, milk bottles were reused 200 times on average and beer bottles 100 times.

Today, milk comes in plastic, and only 45 per cent of glass is recycled. Ms Fitzsimons says NZ needs to look at refundable deposit schemes such as in Denmark, where up to 99 per cent of bottles are returned.

Computers

Takapuna's Core Technology Brokers sells old computer gear overseas, including to the US and Europe. "There is a huge reselling network around the world," says the company's Gordon Laurie.

Tyres

Nobody wants old tyres. In Alberta, Canada, a C$3.80 ($4.80) levy on new tyres pays for old ones to be collected, shredded and recycled as safe surfaces in playgrounds, roof tiles and flooring.

Local tyre companies are talking to officials about possible moves here.

Slowly, Opotiki's example is spreading. The Auckland region's rubbish almost doubled from 430kg a person in 1984 to peak at 842kg in 1999 - but then dropped to 738kg last year.

That is a long way from Opotiki's average of 126kg per person.

But only four years ago Opotiki threw out more than 1000kg a head.