Wheelie bins look within reach for Hamilton residents after council reviews waste collection

Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Hamilton City Council staffer Emily Botje explains how the council's proposed kerbside bin service would work. (This video was first published on September 21, 2016.)

Hamilton could become a wheely-bin city following overwhelming support to ditch rubbish bags.

Hamilton City Council recorded 2793 submissions on its proposed plan to change the way it collects rubbish from homes.

It will meet on Thursday and Friday to review the feedback. The city's current contract for rubbish collection ends in 2019.

Hamilton resident Lara Solomon supports the use of rubbish bags, unless the city council comes up with a way to recycle more types of plastic.

The council has used its Fight the Landfill campaign to highlight how much rubbish Hamiltonians were sending to the landfill and how much could be recycled.

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At the heart of the council's proposal was a move to replace black rubbish bags with separate wheeled bins for rubbish and recycling, while using the existing recycling crates for glass only. A separate food waste collection, using a smaller bin is also proposed.

The council projected it would cost about $7.4m to buy new wheeled bins and despite the price tag, the idea has piqued interest.

Of the submissions, 2349 people wanted to change to wheeled bins and see more recycling options, while 419 people wanted to retain the status quo.

Seventy-six per cent also wanted a food waste service and 67 per cent wanted recycling collected fortnightly.

Hamilton's current kerbside collection service consists of two black bags per week and a recycling crate for glass, aluminum, cans and plastics, with paper and card bundled separately.

The city uses more than four million black rubbish bags and throws around 24,000 tonnes of rubbish into landfill every year.

People could only recycle two types of plastics but the proposed service would enable people to recycle more, including ice cream and yoghurt containers, as well as the once-rejected pizza box. Overall the city could double the amount it recycles.

Hamilton woman Lara Solomon is among many people discussing the changes online via Neighbourly.

She said a positive would be the fact plastics would stop clogging up the landfill, but a negative was working out where to put the bins.

'At our current address I'd prefer to stick with bags as we have nowhere suitable to put wheelie bins, although we have used them in the past at other addresses,' she said.

'It's a good idea but I can see it's not going to suit a lot of people.'

Solomon lives in a stand-alone house on a shared driveway. She doesn't like the idea of having bins sit out on the footpath if her family and neighbours are away.

Her family has two compost bins out by the garden and everything that isn't meat goes in and breaks itself down, she said.

'We usually put out one bag per week, and sometimes two recycle bins. All biodegradable food scraps go into the compost bin or to the birds.'

Solomon said if the council could show that the new collection reduces landfill plastic and offers more recycling options, she'd definitely think about switching to bins.

She also believes the council should lead by example, and have separate bins for waste and recycling at large events, such as Balloons Over Waikato, rather than 'one bin for all'.