Every item placed into the black and yellow recycling bin has to be touched by a human on the conveyor belt sorting line. Photo / Dean Taylor
Every item placed into the black and yellow recycling bin has to be touched by a human on the conveyor belt sorting line. Photo / Dean Taylor
Five per cent of Waipā residents are costing ratepayers about $50,000 a month by ignoring recycling rules.
Waipā District Council waste minimisation adviser Shelley Wilson said people were adding contamination items to their recycling which, if not caught by the auditors, would send the whole truckload to landfill.
“Some obvious non-recyclable items have been found by our auditors, like medical waste, animal carcasses, and food scraps.
“It is not just redirecting contaminated recycling to landfill that costs ratepayers. Someone’s recycling included pieces of machinery metal. As they came across the sorting conveyor belt, they jammed into the chain drive and shut down the whole facility for four hours.”
Up to 10 tonnes of mixed recycling per day is loaded into the hopper and sent up to the sorting conveyor belt. Photo / Dean Taylor
“It gets smashed in the compacting process on the trucks and then comes across the conveyor as shards mixed amongst the other items.
“One worker recently cut himself. I worry it could be serious.
“While these are some extreme examples, most residents are only making a few mistakes that have a simple fix, like removing lids from bottles and rinsing containers.”
Operations manager James Hewson said only clear plastic can be recycled, apart from milk bottles.
“That means all the coloured lids have to be removed and thrown in the waste by the householders or it contaminates the entire load and it all has to go to landfill.
“We also can’t take L&P bottles and any of the drink bottles that have even a slight tinge of colour.”
The centre handles up to 10 tonnes of mixed waste per day, sorting it into recyclables and waste.
Loader/baler Mike McCallion tips a bin of plastic milk bottles into the baler hopper. Photo / Dean Taylor
The product is compressed and baled.
Hewson said the team has to produce about 28 bales per day to keep up. Usually about 20 are recyclable and seven or eight are waste - about 25 per cent.
Even food containers not washed properly become waste.
“If you can’t get the peanut butter or mayonnaise out of the jar, bin it,” said Hill.
Hewson also recommends washing the recycling bin every now and then to reduce contamination.
Another common problem is packing mixed items together.
Hewson said it is easy to put plastic, tins and papers in a box or bag and throw it in the bin, but sometimes when that is compacted it is hard to separate, so it becomes waste.
“Cardboard needs to be flattened and all items need to be binned individually,” he said.
Operations manager James Hewson amongst the mixed recycling waiting to be loaded for sorting holding a plastic bag of recyclable items. He says everything should be binned individually for ease of sorting or it risks becoming waste. Photo / Dean Taylor
Central government introduced standardised recycling across the country in February, and though the changes were minimal for Waipā, behavioural change was not happening fast enough.
For some, the only way to change their behaviour was to suspend their service.
“Our contractors have reported some of the lengths people go to avoid the auditors or the suspension of their collection, if they just put that effort into recycling right, we wouldn’t have such a problem,” said Wilson
The only recycling items collected at the kerbside were those with the recycling symbol and numbers 1, 2 or 5, tins, cans, paper, and cardboard.
