KEY POINTS:
Elderly and disabled residents in Auckland City are being offered smaller wheelie bins instead of a bulky 240-litre bin for a new recycling service starting next week.
About 100 elderly and disabled people have contacted the council to say the new blue-top bins are awkward to manoeuvre.
Putting out the 240-litre recycling bins on the same day as the 120-litre rubbish bins has also raised concerns about clutter on inner city streets with apartments blocks and driveways with multiple residences.
From Monday, Auckland City and Manukau councils are replacing the weekly blue crate and paper collections with a single 240-litre recycling bin once a fortnight. Households and businesses will be able to place plastic, aluminium, metal cans, cardboard cartons and paper into the one bin.
Recycled materials will be processed at a $25 million recovery facility at Onehunga.
City development committee chairman Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga said people should try the big bins first and if they could not physically manage to get them to the kerbside the council would consider providing smaller bins. A container load of 120-litre blue-top bins is expected from overseas in August.
Manukau waste policy analyst Patricia Facenfield said Manukau City was not offering alternatives to the 240-litre recycling bins, preferring to see how the new services goes.
She said a small number of elderly people had contacted the council with concerns about the big bins, but had been visited by a council officer and encouraged to give it a try.
A Remuera resident, who did not want to be named, predicted a shambles with blue and red-top bins out on the same day for collection on kerbs where space is an issue.
Auckland City utility and environmental manager Mike McQuillan said there were going to be some congested kerbsides and the council would work through any problems.
He said the new 240-litre bins would use about the same "footprint" as the current 45-litre blue bins and separate piles of paper.
* Blue-Tops
From Monday, a new fortnightly recycling service begins in Auckland City and Manukau.
About 250,000 240-litre blue-top recycling bins have been delivered.
The kerbside collection will occur once a fortnightly.
Plastic, cans, glass, paper and cardboard can be put in the same bin.
