Talkin' trash - Far North style

If you live in certain areas of the Far North you're not alone in being befuddled by rubbish collection. The tricky bit is knowing what company collects your rubbish when and where and if you're new to the area it can be a mission to find out.

It was only a casual conversation in the supermarket that lead one woman new to Kerikeri to buy the requisite plastic bags since no information was left at her new house. This brings up the point, isn't it the ultimate irony that recyclable rubbish must be placed in a plastic bag? If this was most other green-aware countries in the world - or even, for goodness sake, Auckland - those bags so toxic to the environment would have been outlawed years ago. It's the seemingly high cost of those bags compared to other 'ordinary' plastic bags which funds the kerbside collection.

Wheelie bins and crates are available but unlike in many towns where they're provided by council, they must be subscribed to from the privately-owned rubbish collectors.

Then there is paper. According to many residents, while some companies will pick up newspaper packages tied up with string others are described as 'cavalier' in this regard and the newspaper is simply left on the kerbside to get soggy in the rain. Perhaps it's because cardboard is the income-producer, not newspaper, and private companies must not only generate waste as a resource but revenue as well. These are the so-called 'advantages' of the private model but is this modus operandi a healthy community service?

A few years back the only collector of rubbish in the southern area of the Far North was Wasteworks of Kaikohe which a subsidiary of Northland Waste and fully New Zealand-owned and operated. When the Far North District Council put the contract to tender it went to East West Waste, a subsidiary of Australian company Transpacific Industries. Under the market forces strategy that left Wasteworks to provide opposition to East West which they did by under-cutting the Aussie company's plastic bag price. But other waste companies are involved elsewhere in the Far North too.

A recycling facility that used to be in Cobham Road, Kerikeri, ceased operating a few years back when the property was sold and has never been replaced. Meanwhile, a planned waste transfer station in Waipapa Road has been the subject of a legal wrangle between Turners and Growers in Waipapa who have objected to the Far North District Council issuing a certificate of compliance to Northland Waste (which owns Waste Works) for the earmarked site next to the company's Kerifresh depot.

In late May Justice Murray Gilbert ruled the process that led to the issuance of a certificate of compliance was flawed. It was a major setback for Northland Waste. At the time of writing the Far North District Council declined the opportunity to comment.

As for green waste, in Kerikeri the only green disposal depot is privately-owned and operated and although probably competitive price-wise it's not open on the weekends, the very time most working folk would like to dispose of, or pick up, compost material.

So, south of Mangonui it's not surprising that getting your rubbish collected is like matching all the sides of a Rubic cube and just as hard to achieve and for clarity of sorts, see the side bar. Further north it's a little bit different and there are many southern residents who are almost green (to use an appropriate expression) with envy when their gaze shifts further north to areas surrounding and including Kaitaia. With reason they ask why that region's solution to rubbish collection can't be adopted as a template for the southern part of the Far North district.

A Community and Business Environment Centre (CBEC) was established in 1989 as an environmentally sustainable not-for-profit business and, importantly, to provide training and employment for locals with profits going back into the community. It's an exemplary model. They run ten refuse transfer stations under the Clean Stream 'brand' which is a joint venture between CBEC and Te Runanga O Te Rarawa. Shares are available in CBEC empowering shareholders to vote and to be eligible for election to the Board of Directors.

CEBEC employ locals to sort rubbish manually whereas private companies use imported (and expensive) compacting machines before trucking the squashed rubbish to Puwera landfill in Whangarei which is a private partnership run on a commercial basis by council and Quay Contracting Limited, a subsidiary of Northland Waste. It's progress of sorts. The rubbish used to be trucked to Auckland.

So while private contractors may be competitive, is such a plethora of contractors and a kaleidoscope of colorful plastic rubbish bags really necessary? Is it time to ask if this commercial model isn't a bit, well, rubbishy?