Street's recycling dumped in rubbish truck

Wednesday, 24 October 2018

Bruce Scobie is annoyed he did his bit for recycling but saw it tipped straight into the rubbish truck.

Bruce Scobie does his bit when it comes to recycling.

He washes out the bottles, separates the different containers, and knows exactly which numbered cast-offs of modern consumerism can find new life in a journey starting at his bright green council recycling bin.

But last Tuesday morning the environmental message Hamilton City Council has spent years fostering felt like so much trash to Scobie when he watched shortcut-taking contractors tip his street's recyclables straight into the rubbish truck.

'My wife was watching the truck and next minute whoa, in goes the rubbish but also in goes the recycling. So my wife rushed down and asked what is happening and he said the recycling truck is running late today so everything is going in here.'

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'So it's a bit ridiculous that everything was thrown in together. It's one of those aggravating things and also a mystery as to why they would do that.'

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It wasn't just Scobie's house that was affected, all of Clark Place in Hillcrest had their recycling bins emptied into the rubbish truck.

When questioned, the rubbish truck driver told the Scobies that it was the only time it had happened.

Recycling collector Waste Management holds the contract to collect rubbish for the Hamilton City Council and said what Scobie saw was an isolated incident.

'(It was) in one street, which has approximately 16 houses. This is not normal procedure for our recycling collections and disciplinary action has been initiated.'

Hamilton City Council Compliance Manager Trent Fowles said the organisation was 'very disappointed' over the incident.

'This is not what we expect from our contractor and we are investigating this with them to ensure this does not happen again.'

But the saga of Clark Place is a small scale version of what some fear is happening with the growing mountain of New Zealand recyclables left with no home after China closed the door on 24 products it had once largely made disappear into its own giant recycling chain.

It meant that all plastic, slag, unsorted waste paper and textiles once sent there for recycling have to go somewhere else. The result has been growing stockpiles of recycling building up until an alternative is found and in some cases either catching alight or being tipped into landfill.

In April, a fire broke out at the Smart Environmental recycling plant near Thames, burning through piles of recycling waste.

Around 150 tonnes of stockpiled plastic and paper was in an outside shed, which ignited and burnt down and at least another 100 tonnes went to landfill, after being tarnished by ash and embers in the fire.

Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage said earlier this year New Zealand had been sending 15 million kilograms of plastic material to facilities in China per year.

Glass, cardboard, PET and HDPE plastics processors here in New Zealand were able to manage recycling, she said, while New Zealand was also selling some of the PET and HDPE plastics commodities overseas.

'The recyclable materials that are most problematic right now are low quality mixed plastics and mixed paper and cardboard. There are few markets for these commodities.'

Some of the plastic and paper waste that was once sold to China was being diverted to other processing plants in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Hamilton City Council said that the city's recyclables are taken to Tauranga on a daily basis where the material is aggregated with other district's recyclables and sent on for sale.

Fowles said that rubbish and recycling need to be managed and processed separately to maximise what can be recycled.

'Our new service in 2020 includes wheeled bins and more recycling options, enabling us to further reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill,' Fowles said.

The city council waste management and minimisation plan has a target of a 50 per cent increase in per capita kerbside recycling, A 10 per cent reduction in the per capita amount of rubbish to landfill, 25 per cent decrease in kerbside rubbish to landfill and a 10 per cent increase in the amount of material diverted from landfill.