Ollie likes to keep his bins clean.
Ollie Chamberlain is one tidy Kiwi.
The seven-year-old Levin schoolboy spends all his spare money on bins and is constantly sorting out rubbish and recycling.
He even checks his neighbours' bins to make sure they are recycling correctly and is not shy in letting them know if they have it wrong.
His mother Kirsten said Ollie's first word when he was able to talk was "mop".
"He had this obsession with going to the cleaning cupboard and getting the mop out," she said, and from there his interest segued to rubbish bins
"Honestly, he's so obsessed with them," she said.
"He's had a passion for it for quite some time now. It's all his own doing."
"We've got a bin in every room and he also has bins lined up outside. Every week on rubbish day he takes the bins out and brings them back in. He gets very upset if we do it."
"And he washes out the bins and inspects them to make sure they're totally clean."
So, how tidy was his room?
"It's pretty tidy, if you can get around the rubbish bins," she said. Ollie brought bins with his pocket money, from op shops and bargain stores. His last purchase was a worm composting bin," she said.
Ollie's father, Abraham, arranged for his son to have a ride in a recycling truck.
"They took him all around town in it and they did a video clip on him, 'Ollie the recycling hero'," he said.
At school Ollie was known as the "recycling king". He was even preparing a speech as part of his oral assessment to share with the school on his favourite topic.
"He's on duty to empty all the paper bins and whenever they have school discos and galas he gets all the bins out and he gets really upset when people don't use the right ones," she said.
The Fairfield School pupil helped out at the school gala recently. A huge event, he helped co-ordinate the recycling effort. He was always willing to help the school's caretaker Gary Wylie, too.
But Ollie's waste management aspirations don't stop there. He has big plans for the future.
"He said the other day he's going to be the manager of a company and he's going to invent something to compost everything and ship it out overseas to help people," she said.
"He's all about the environment. He's got quite a caring heart. He's amazing."
His family had always recycled, but the introduction of new recycling bins by Horowhenua District Council really captured Ollie's interest.
"We got a chart that told you everything about recycling and he just basically went from there, he just loved it," she said
On receiving a pack of RecycleKiwi waste separation stickers in the post recently, he quickly got to work labelling all his bins.
"He spent the day sorting everything," she said.
CrestClean managing director Grant McLauchlan says Ollie's enthusiasm for recycling was fantastic.
"When it comes to recycling, kids often lead the way," he said.
