First year of Whanganui District Council’s kerbside recycling service brings in 1402 tonnes

The kerbside service began on July 1 last year. Photo / Mike Tweed

Whanganui’s kerbside recycling service has ticked over one year of operation, with 1402 tonnes sent for processing.

A report from Whanganui District Council waste manager Morgan Harrison said 344 tonnes of materials had been sent for processing in the last quarter (April-June) of the 2024/25 financial year.

Harrison told the council’s operations and performance committee last month that the contractor, Low Cost Bins, was receiving positive feedback and having good interactions with members of the public.

Over the next three months, council staff would conduct assessments on participation and the impact on “general waste compositions of residential bins”, her report said.

In the service’s first month, July 2024, 74.64 tonnes of materials were sent to processing plants.

There were 132.11 tonnes in June this year, with 84.32 tonnes in May and 127.4 tonnes in April.

At the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre, 216 tonnes of material were collected in the final quarter, compared to 406 tonnes over the same period last year.

The council took over operations at the resource recovery centre from the centre’s trust in June last year.

Ratepayers in the kerbside network, which covers Whanganui’s urban areas and rural settlements such as Mowhanau, Fordell and Marybank, paid about $2.75 a week for the service in the 2024/25 financial year.

It will cost about $3.11 a week for 2025/26.

Harrison said a full breakdown of the cost of cancelling the council’s food scraps service would be presented to the committee in September.

In March, elected members voted nine to four in favour of cancelling the service, due to begin on July 1, following a Government policy reversal on December 18 that ended a mandate to have it in place by 2027.

At the time, the Chronicle reported that because of sunk costs, there would be a charge of about $17 a year without the service, compared to $80 a year if it went ahead.

“We haven’t quite finalised negotiations with MfE [Ministry for the Environment], who are willing to come to the party with some of the sunk costs for the bins,” Harrison said.

Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.