A recycling station run by the Napier City Council has come under scrutiny after locals used social media to express concerns that plastic rubbish intended for recycling was being dumped in the general waste area.
However it appears the council has not accepted plastic waste since May 2014, because too many potentially recyclable items were contaminated and it was costing the council $4000 a month to send the contents of the plastic bins to recycling.
Council waste minimisation lead Rhett van Veldhuizen said only paper, glass and metal were now accepted in the rubbish and recycling section at Taradale's Redclyffe transfer station on Springfield Rd."Despite the bin being removed people continued to dump plastics at Redclyffe so we had to reinstall a cage for plastics to encourage those who did show up with them to dispose of them in this cage rather than contaminate the other bins to the point it made these bins unusable," he said.
Mr Veldhuizen said the amount dumped in the plastics cage, which is emptied into the landfill, was enough to fill it twice every day, and was often contaminated with non-recyclable plastics such as PVC, soft plastics, toys and planter pots.
Many people expressed their concerns about this on Facebook, and Mr Veldhuizen reported that the council was aware a recent Facebook complaint from someone unhappy about the way recycling was handed at Redclyffe.
