KEY POINTS:
Wheelie bins for bottles, cans and plastic will be introduced throughout Auckland, encouraging households to recycle more and reduce the city's carbon footprint.
From next year, Auckland City and Manukau households will be given a 240-litre wheelie bin to recycle paper, cardboard, tin and aluminium cans, glass bottles and plastic containers graded from 1 to 7. They will replace up to three 45-litre crates a household and be collected fortnightly.
About 250,000 of the green bins will be given out when the service starts in July next year. Households will still put out 120-litre bins for other rubbish.
But the local authorities have been warned not to ignore the downsides of "co-mingling". An independent report says overseas cases showed significant volumes of glass ended up in low-value uses or landfill.
North Shore and Waitakere City Councils introduced combined collections to New Zealand 20 months ago. A fortnightly collection of 140-litre wheelie bins has led to a 30 per cent increase in recycling in those cities.
But David Carter, chairman of the Glass Packaging Forum, said problems were caused when glass pieces were too small for the most lucrative process, making new glass. It led to increased contamination of other materials, especially paper.
The report found the new system had led to breakages of up to 30 per cent in North Shore and Waitakere. If that were replicated in Auckland and Manukau about 10,000 tonnes of glass could not be recycled by existing uses.
Rennae Corner, manager of the environmental infrastructure team at the Auckland City Council, said stockpiles would be minimised through improved technology and increasing new uses for ground glass as a sand substitute, such as glass-blasting.
The new wheelie bins provided more capacity and made recycling easier. What's more, they would reduce street litter because the present open-top bins allow plastic and newspaper to blow away in the wind.
Hopefully, people would see the new bins as "doing my bit for the environment", Ms Corner said.
Auckland City councillor and Green Party member Neil Abel said the next step would be a wheelie bin for food scraps and garden waste.
"That is where the major impact occurs with carbon dioxide emissions and will provide a quantum change in the amount of material going to landfills."
Mr Abel said it was too early to say how much the new scheme would cost because the tenders were still being reviewed.
He said $27 million had been put aside over the next 10 years in the annual 2005/2006 budget.
In 2001, when wheelie bins went from 240-litre capacity to 120-litre, the Auckland council set a goal of halving the amount of rubbish going to landfills by 2010. Volumes dropped by 30 per cent but have been sneaking up.
Auckland and Manukau councils are planning a $20 million recycling plant at an Auckland City Council-owned site in Onehunga to mechanically sort the material.
The plant, which will be built, owned and operated by a private company, is one of the biggest recycling investments in New Zealand.
The largest Australian recycling plant at Chullora in Sydney processes 90,000 tonnes a year of paper, aluminium, steel, plastic and glass - about the same weight as two Sydney Harbour Bridges.
Mr Abel said organic waste accounted for more than 40 per cent of the contents of wheelie bins. Providing a third wheelie bin for this material and garden waste was two to three years away.
Did you know?
* Recycling one tonne of paper saves 13 trees.
* A recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.
* Making plastics from recycled materials uses 70 per cent less energy than making plastics from fossil fuels.
