Hamilton bans cardboard pizza boxes from kerbside collection

Friday, 15 April 2016

Heather Welham counted 50 pizza boxes dumped on the side of the road during a 10 minute drive to her children's school.

Thousands of pizza boxes are rotting in landfills or being turfed onto city streets after the Hamilton City Council banned them for its recycling.

The council says it has never officially accepted the boxes in its kerbside collection but admits its collectors have been inconsistent in the past.

Pizza boxes left on the kerb along Hamilton's Rimu Street.

The boxes are recyclable.

The council's new hard-line stance has confused residents who have bombarded social media in recent weeks, asking why their boxes haven't been collected.

* Kiwis are rubbish at recycling, report finds**

One major pizza maker said it was 'gutted' by the council's crackdown, saying it's invested heavily to make sure its boxes are recyclable.

Hamilton woman Heather Welham contacted the council earlier this month after noticing dozens of pizza boxes strewn across her Flagstaff neighbourhood.

The mother-of-two said her family enjoy pizza at least twice a month and rountinely put the boxes out for collection.

'These boxes always use to be collected but now, in the last few weeks, the trucks leave them behind, and it's creating such a mess,' Welham said.

The 43-year-old counted up to 50 pizza boxes scattered along the roadside during a 10-minute drive to her children's school.

'There's pizza boxes everywhere and there seems to be no communication from the council or anybody about this,' Welham said.

'It's a big issue, I mean, who doesn't eat pizza? Pizza companies label their boxes 'recyclable' and now suddenly the council is saying they're not. I rang the city council and the woman on the phone told me to put the boxes in my rubbish bag or put them in my garden because they're biodegradable.'

New Zealanders chomp through an estimated one million pizzas every week.

Hamilton residents have gone online to vent their frustration, including posting on social networking site Neighbourly.

Many said the council's erratic approach to collecting pizza boxes had caused widespread confusion.

Trent Fowles, council's city waters unit compliance manager, said the council didn't recycle pizza boxes due to the risk of contamination from food residue and oils.

The council's contractor, Waste Management, doesn't separate greasy food-stained boxes from clean material, meaning dirty pizza boxes could contaminate paper and cardboard batches sent to recyclers.

'The risk is that pizza boxes with food waste could contaminate a batch and see the whole lot rejected,' Fowles said.

He didn't know of any instances of a batch being rejected.

The council's 10 year contract with Waste Management expires in 2017.

'Looking to the future, we are working with our contractors to see whether changes in process or new equipment may allow pizza boxes to be collected for recycling in the future,' Fowles said.

A working party was currently reviewing the council's kerbside collection service.

Fowles said collectors had been inconsistent in their approach to pizza boxes, with some picking up the items.

The council contacted Waste Management this month asking it to remind its drivers to leave the boxes on the kerb.

Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin all recycle pizza boxes as long as the items are free of food waste.

Districts councils such as Waipa and Waikato, Whangarei, Taupo, Queenstown Lakes and New Plymouth also recycle clean pizza boxes.

In 2015, Public Place Recycling Scheme (PPRS) research reported half of surveyed households in New Zealand turfed their pizza boxes into the rubbish.

The research also found many people didn't know the boxes could be recycled, prompting industry players to team up with councils and recyclers.

Educating pizza lovers on how to recycle their boxes was a key plank of the campaign.

Lyn Mayes of the Packaging Forum said the major pizza companies had invested a lot of resources to ensure their boxes were recyclable.

Mayes estimates more than 70 per cent of ratepayers across the country can now recycle their pizza boxes at the kerbside.

Those councils that didn't offer kerbside recycling were typically rural.

It was disappointing Hamilton residents weren't able to recycle a product that was 100 per cent recyclable, Mayes said.

'People really want to do the right thing and recycle stuff so I can understand people's frustration in Hamilton that they've been putting boxes out for recycling and now it's not being collected,' she said.

Domino's New Zealand general manager Scott Bush said the company was 'very disappointed' by Hamilton City Council's stance.

'In fact we are gutted,' Bush said, adding the company wanted to work with the city council.

'It would be great to get Hamilton back aligned with the majority of the rest of the country.

'We are definitely not happy with the littering that is occurring during this confusing time for the residents, and nor are we happy with boxes ending up in landfills.'

Hamilton City Council won kudos in March when it became the first council in New Zealand to officially support the Love NZ Soft Plastic Recycling Programme.

The initiative allows residents to recycle soft plastics - such as supermarket bags, bread bags, plastic wrapping and postage bags - in recycling bins around the city.