Just over six months into its kerbside recycling and rubbish service, Western Bay of Plenty District Council is on the cusp of hitting a significant target.
The council rolled out its kerbside rubbish and recycling service on July 1 last year with a rates-funded recycling and food scraps collecting service for urban areas alongside a "pay-as-you-throw" rubbish collection service.
The recycling service was designed to increase the amount of material diverted from landfill by about 60 per cent to around 1800 tonnes a year.
In the first six months of its operation, 1546 tonnes has been diverted from landfill — 639 tonnes of glass, 609 tonnes of recycling and 298 tonnes of food waste.
"We've almost met our first year's annual target in the first six months," says project manager kerbside services Ken Buckley, "and I think by the time we roll over seven months, we'll probably get that 1800 tonnes diversion that we'd anticipated for the first year."
This success is even more impressive considering for part of that time, while the country was in lockdown, recycling facilities were closed and all recycling was going to landfill.
Ken says the system was devised to incentivise recycling with a fixed charge for the recycling service and residents having the ability to reduce their rubbish collection costs by paying only when their rubbish bin was collected.
"Whether you use it or not, you are paying for [the recycling service], so your incentive is then to increase the amount that goes into your recycling and reduce the amount that goes into your refuse bin [which is] directly impacting on your wallet. So if you have to pay for that red bin to be emptied, then you would want it to be emptied as infrequently as possible."
He says generally the feedback has been positive, although one hiccup in the system is tags on bins disappearing or being stolen and bins not collected as a result.
"We have had reports of that happening, but they are very few and far between."
The last audit available, from November, suggests on average 7 per cent of recycling is being diverted to landfill due to contamination.
Ken says some people are perhaps confused as to what should go in the recycling bin. "There have been highs and lows, it's been down to 3 per cent, and up as high as 15 per cent."
That high figure coincided with lockdown.
"Because it was going to landfill, people weren't too worried about sorting and there was also some refuse going into recycling bins — that was the highest contamination period for sure."
One of the education tools the council uses is "kerbside coaches".
"They are looking at what's on top of recycling, and looking for contamination then letting people who have been inspected know how they've gone. Green means they are doing a fantastic job, yellow means good but room for improvement and red means it's terribly contaminated and we can't pick them up."
Resource recovery and waste team leader Ilze Kruis encourages people not to "wish recycle" and to refer to the council's website for advice.
"When in doubt, throw out," she says. "Don't look at it and think, 'I wish we could recycle that' and put it in and hope — it just contaminates it — and if you contaminate it too much, it's all going to go to landfill."
Kerbside food collection is another feature of Tauranga and Western Bay's kerbside services.
"There is a reasonable presentation [of food scrap bins] on the kerbside on a weekly basis and we are getting 298 tonnes year to date that's not going into landfill or into wastewater treatment plants. We are impressed with what we receive so far."
The food scraps are sorted at the kerbside, consolidated with collections from Tauranga City and sent to a commercial composting facility at Hampton Downs .
There has been an impact on the council's recycling centres.
"They are still very busy, but there's been a reduction in the total tonnage going through there and that has to be because of kerbside service," says Ken.
"It proves that the recycling centres are still required for that excess flow of cardboard, paper and glass and difficult to recycle things not captured by the kerbside service like motor oil and fluorescent lights and hazardous waste, and green waste as well," says Ilze.
Results of the latest Solid Waste Audit Protocol have yet to be received, but once they are the priorities of further education programmes will be decided.
"We are also currently looking at trying to identify any holes in our service area and also looking at introducing light commercial properties to potentially be in the service as well," says Ken.
He says perhaps the biggest issue the service experienced was an initial shortage of bins, due to national supply issues and an unexpected number of residents eligible for the service.
"But we got on top of that pretty quickly and really that was our only major hiccup.
"People can take a lot of time to get used to things, particularly if they are not engaged. People aren't always engaged on what's recyclable and what isn't, so it takes some time to get people educated on how a new service works, but generally, on a 7 per cent contamination rate for recycling, I think things have gone exceptionally well.
"A lot of the customer service requests now are things like a bin has been missed, so its something that's happened that's operational, we don't really get any negative feedback with the service and people saying, 'we don't want the service, it was better in the past'. I think people have realised it's not hitting their pocket and they are actually getting a good service for what they pay."
Waste and recycling consultant Marty Hoffart of Waste Watchers.
Waste and recycling consultant Marty Hoffart of Waste Watchers in Tauranga says Western Bay and Tauranga City councils have given residents the tools to "do the right thing".
"I have nothing but positive comments for what both councils have done under, in some regards, great duress from people who didn't want the change .
''At the end of the day, if we are going to get better at this and divert a lot more waste from landfill, we have to make a major change in what we were doing — we can't get a little less bad, it was a big change that was needed.''
Marty says there aren't many councils in New Zealand with kerbside food collections.
''What [Western Bay and Tauranga City] have done ... they are leading the way in the country because there's a lot of councils that aren't collecting that food and that food made up around 30 per cent of people's weekly rubbish."
He also praises Western Bay's pay-as-you-throw system.
''That incentivises people not to want to generate rubbish and that in itself is a big factor in changing behaviour.
''I like the system because if you don't put your bin out for thee weeks you aren't spending $3.95, and it incentivises people to not push it out to the kerb.''
