It is apparently too difficult and too expensive to separate the different materials to recycle them.
The subject of recycling in Tauranga came up over a couple of quiets the other day and the question was asked: "What does our community do about recycling?"
A good question and one worth looking at.
We have a good waste treatment plant in Maleme St and I believe there is another at the Mount.
I have, on quite a few occasions, visited the Tauranga facility to drop off bottles and various other recyclable products. The days after Christmas and New Year are busy there believe me.
The council-run depot does a great job and, for any recyclable product, it's free.
However, kerbside collections are a different story.
This is where we as ratepayers are not encouraged to recycle. It costs and, for many, that's another unneeded expense.
It is quite interesting looking at various council websites around New Zealand and how they approach their kerbside refuse collections.
Palmerston North City Council supplies all rateable residential properties with a 240-litre wheelie bin for plastic, paper, cardboard, tins and cans and a 45-litre recycling crate for glass collection only. Recycling wheelie bins and recycling crates are collected fortnightly on alternate weeks.
All residential properties are charged as part of their annual rates and that's fair enough.
Hamilton City operates a similar system.
The Horotui land fill that is used to dispose of Hamilton's rubbish receives on average 90,000 tonnes of waste a year, that's the equivalent of 27 buses every day.
If everyone used kerbside recycling to its full potential, we could reduce the amount of rubbish going to landfill by two-thirds.
Here in Tauranga, we use pre-stickered pre-paid plastic bags for our kerbside collections or the user-pays plastic wheelie bins run by private rubbish collection companies.
But again there is no incentive to recycle. If you want to be a caring citizen and recycle paper and bottles, it will cost you. It costs anyway, so what's the point in paying more to recycle? Where is the incentive? You are better off to make the trip to the recycling station fortnightly and take care of it yourself.
In fact, here's an idea. As it's Good Neighbours weekend this weekend, why not get together with a group of your neighbours and form a group that takes it in turns to do the run to the Maleme St recyling station.
You will probably only have to do it once a month if you have a group of three or four in the scheme. It's a great way to become neighbourly and find out who the best party people are at the same time.
There are some interesting schemes used overseas to recycle glass. In Norway apparently, when you buy your beer, you buy the bottles in a plastic crate. When you have finished, you return the crate with the empties and replace.
As you may have noticed there are still refunds on glass bottles offered in South Australia. Remember the days of school bottle drive? What a great fundraiser.
There has been some talk lately of getting milk back into glass bottles. That's not a bad idea and it would certainly cut down on waste.
