Prices for recyclables fall - Whanganui kerbside collection unlikely

The Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre is still the best option for recycling in this district, Rob Vinsen says. Photo / Bevan Conley

An upheaval in the international market for recyclables has made council-funded kerbside collection a distant prospect for Whanganui, the council's waste minimisation chairman, Rob Vinsen, says.

China has been phasing out its collection of recyclable materials since 2017, and prices for paper and plastic have collapsed. New buyers are now entering the market, but it has yet to settle down.

In this environment, Whanganui District Council is lucky it doesn't have a ratepayer-funded kerbside recycling collection, Vinsen said.

"The state of the recycling marketplace makes it high risk to start collecting a lot more product at this point in time."

In a survey last October, 60 per cent of residents said they would like some form of council-funded kerbside collection - 44 per cent wanted it for both rubbish and recycling, and 16 per cent wanted it for recycling only.

The council contracted specialist waste consultants Morrison Low to advise on how to implement the result. Since the drop in recyclable prices, they have been asked to provide options other than kerbside collection.

The options are likely to include adding smaller satellite resource recovery centres in other parts of Whanganui town and district. They could also advise on how to provide competition to the only transfer station in Whanganui that's open to the public, the Liffiton St one run by Waste Management.

Morrison Low are due to report to council's property and community services committee on July 10. But Vinsen said there is unlikely to be any implementation of their advice until after the local body elections in October.

The change in markets has hit New Zealand councils that collect recyclables hard. Plastic is a big component of waste, and eight New Zealand councils are no longer collecting the plastic coded 3, 4, 6 and 7 because they cannot find markets for it.

The Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre (WRRC) is still taking them, and can stockpile them for six months. But users may wish to spare it the trouble and put them straight into their bag or bin to be sent to landfill.

"We would ask our community, if they wish, to not deposit those plastic grades at the centre. That would ease our storage requirements," Vinsen said.

In the meantime, WRRC still has good markets for plastics coded 1, 2 and 5. WRRC users are asked to check the numbers before they deposit these.

PLASTIC NO 1
+ PET
+ clear plastic bottles, biscuit trays
+ sent to Flight Plastics in Petone
+ added to new plastic to make clear plastic food packaging, carpet fibre, polar fleece

PLASTIC NO 2
+ HDPE
+ milk bottles, cleaning product containers
+ sent to Aotearoa New Zealand Made in Palmerston North
+ made into rubbish bags or onsold as granules to make pipes, bins

PLASTIC NO 5
+ polypropylene
+ some takeaway containers, ice cream containers, yoghurt containers
+ sent to Aotearoa New Zealand Made in Palmerston North
+ reprocessed to granules, onsold to make the bar chairs used in concrete work