A rural community advocate is rubbishing council reasons for removing public bins and says offering locals clean-up gear is an “insult”.
Rotorua Lakes Council has removed 91 public bins over the past two years and may take another 54 as it sees potential for “significant savings” from encouraging people to take their rubbish home.
Bins were removed from Tikitapu (Blue Lake) in early 2023 in what the council has described as the first “test” of this, and in response to a wasp problem.
The move frustrated Rotorua Blue Lake TOP 10 Holiday Park staff collecting a bag of rubbish a day from the lakefront public carpark.
The council said in December it did not expect people to pick up others’ rubbish, but appreciated those who did, and it could provide bags and gloves to volunteers.
Lake Ōkāreka Community Association chairman Mitch Collins told Local Democracy Reporting the offer of bags and gloves was an “insult”.
He backed the view holiday park operations manager Kelsi Hira expressed in December that the removals were about reducing council costs.
Collins said he believed the council’s justifications were “limited” and he worried more communities would lose their bins.
For a few months, signs posted near Lake Ōkāreka bins asked people to take their rubbish home, but the council said they were removed in mid-November for being 0.04sqm oversized.
Collins said locals were asked to survey and catalogue rubbish they collected, which he viewed as the council putting the burden of proof on them to show their bins were needed.
“We don’t work for council. We have jobs. [The council is] really capitalising on community goodwill … offering us a supply of gloves and rubbish bags is an insult.”
Collins said he believed the council relied too heavily on community rubbish reporting and did not know “the scale of the problem”.
He said Lake Ōkāreka generally had low rubbish levels but in summer bins overflowed.
Locals cleared most litter by the time the bins were emptied, he said. One man collected one to three bags a day walking his dog at Boyes Beach.
He questioned why extra bins were recently installed at the Rotorua Lakefront if the council wanted to push waste education.
Council waste and climate change manager Craig Goodwin said the 23 Tikitapu bins were removed to deal with the wasps, but had also often overflowed or been used for household rubbish.
The removal decision became “the first real test of bin reduction”.
Goodwin said wasp issues were no longer noticed or reported, and rubbish issues at Tikitapu did not increase, with five public reports and six from council staff or contractors in the 12 months to December 19.
He said the council’s Waste Management and Minimisation Plan 2022-28 process, which included community consultation, resulted in plans to reduce public bins by about 14% – or 103 bins – to minimise waste generation, and maximise waste diversion and resource recovery.
Phase one – removing redundant or abused bins – removed 45 bins from the CBD, 29 from road and neighbourhood reserves and 23 from Tikatapu, totalling 91 of the district’s 740 public bins.
Another 54 bins may be moved or removed in phase two, which will begin this year with stakeholder feedback, including with businesses in areas where bins were already removed.
Goodwin said research showed removing park bins encouraged people to take responsibility for rubbish and dispose of it mindfully. People conscientious enough to use a bin would take rubbish home.
“It’s the true litter bugs whose behaviour needs to change.”
He said the council measured whether litter became significantly worse after bins were removed.
At Tikitapu, the litter was estimated at about 1-2% of the former bin capacity of 38,640 litres of rubbish per week.
“This we can manage using alternative means.”
The impact in the CBD and urban reserves appeared to be the same so far, he said.
Asked if unreported public clean-ups could be skewing test results, Goodwin said if the amount collected was similar to that reported, the total would still be “relatively small” compared to when there were bins.
The main goal was reducing waste produced, he said, and encouraging people to think about what they generate part of that. Taking it home meant it could be sorted properly for recycling and the council could also reduce service and maintenance costs.
Goodwin said there could be “significant savings” if litter decreased, but these would not be known until the end of phase two.
The council aimed to tailor rubbish management to the “unique” visitor behaviours in different areas, such as the CBD, lakefront, and reserves.
He reiterated the council did not expect people to pick up others’ rubbish and encouraged people to report issues. Staff and contractors were in reserves daily, he said, and patrols increased over summer.
Asked if the council recognised the impact the local community felt with the bins’ removal, he said its view was that “much of the community appeared to have gotten on board and adapted their behaviour to match changes made, particularly in our urban areas”.
The council encouraged behavioural change through signage, workshops, helping with clean-ups and community gardens, and campaigns to encourage people to reduce waste generated and to take rubbish home.
Laura Smith is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. She previously reported general news for the Otago Daily Times and Southland Express, and has been a journalist since 2019.
- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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