The orchardists are prepping the stonefruit and the market gardeners have salad and strawberries
of considerable lusciousness.
Also, the farmers and growers are preparing the countryside.
Silage bales are receiving red hats, smiles and, in some cases, being turned into snowmen. Some have received antlers and red noses.
In other “installations”, they are the launching or landing pads for reindeer and Santa’s sleigh.
Creativity and humour in farm art combine to make the drive-past more amusing.
Road edges and rest areas are receiving attention, not only from council staff and NZTA, but from tractor drivers and the landowners with ride-on mowers.
We’re preparing the countryside for the visitors – the wave of people who leave the city for the beach or lake, seeking respite and refreshment.
We’re welcoming you.
We hope you feel proud of beautiful New Zealand and the work done to support the economy.
So when you see a ditch with a mattress and sofa, or a pile of burned-out tyres, or the dregs of a takeaway and drink session ... please realise it isn’t negligence on the landowner’s part, but a constant battle with fly-tipping.
In the Waikato, more than 740 requests are received each year – more than two a day – to pick up rubbish piles.
The council issues a $400 fine to anybody “caught”, but the chances of a catcher being in the right place at the right time are slim.
Most – but not all – fly-tippers have the sense to remove their own addresses and phone numbers from the rubbish they are dumping.
They can’t do the cleaning on DNA from fabrics, though, but before we start funding councils to swab sofas, mattresses and discarded garments, perhaps what we need are some “nudges”.
Nudge theory is based on the suggestion that environmental cues can influence people’s decisions and behaviours towards desired outcomes without restricting choice.
It operates by adjusting the “choice architecture”, or the way choices are presented, to make a desired option easier or more appealing.
Taking things to the dump costs money. Paying to do the right thing is a disincentive.
Might a free system result in reduced expenditure on rubbish pickers on the roads?
The present clean-up costs involve a truck and trailer for “piles”, a ute for emptying bins (with their sacks piled around them) and a driver with a small vehicle, and a “hand” for picking up the rubbish, preceded and followed by a warning vehicle.
Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Dr Jacqueline Rowarth on The Country below:
Reducing expenditure here might offset “free” for official dumps.
Would 24-hour access to official dumping sites be of benefit?
The fly-tippers have vehicles and trailers and operate at night.
Might they be encouraged to visit a dump rather than a country road if hours included evenings?
Some dumps take no tyres, others have a limit.
Would boy racers be encouraged to take their tyres to an official site if there were a $5 rebate? (And if there were, perhaps somebody would like to take the 12 tyres that arrived in a nearby layby six weeks ago and which the council has yet to pick up?)
The beer bottle collection ought to be easy.
They are the leading material subcategory in any single material type (ie glass) for national litter weight.
Some liquor stores have a recycling policy.
Some recycling places have skips for glass of specific colours.
Might there be a way of 12 green (or brown) bottles “standing on a wall” for some sort of credit?
The systems on trial for plastics in a couple of supermarkets may provide the start of the answer.
New Zealand is not the only country having a problem.
In England, local authorities dealt with 1.15 million fly-tipping incidents (60% of them were household waste), an increase of 6% from the previous year.
In 2015, before Brexit, research into fly-tipping in the UK produced recommendations for the future, ranging from mapping likely illegal dump sites and setting up cameras to increasing fines.
The disincentives were all about making flytipping more difficult, not about providing incentives.
The fact there is still a major problem supports the suggestion here of a different approach.
Fly-tippers are solving their problem by making it somebody else’s.
Charging and fining have not done what is required.
A reset is required.
We need to make it easier to do the right thing … not only for Christmas, but for New Zealand.
