Auckland Council's waste planning manager Parul Sood says residents will be allowed to put out up to one cubic metre of items per house. Individual items must be able to be lifted by two people and not be heavier than 55kg. They must also be kept on the property close to the driveway.
Acceptable inorganic items are listed on Makethemostofwaste.co.nz. The council won't collect some objects commonly left out in the old inorganic collection such as: recyclable packaging, tyres, car parts, building and trade waste, fibrolite, floor coverings, and gas cylinders.
The new inorganic methodology outlined in Auckland's 2012 Waste Management and Minimisation Plan is to create economic, social, and environmental opportunities from resources that were previously classed as waste, says Sood.
In the short term, reusable items will be taken by the trucks to a newly opened warehouse in Penrose run by the Community Recycling Network (CRN), a not-for-profit, which is made up of 60 member organisations.
It was a bold move by CRN to take the contract. Project manager Sei Brown says his organisation got involved so that it could be influential around the process of building the city's recovery network, which the council hopes will supersede the warehouse operation.
In the meantime CRN has approved community groups such as the Salvation Army and local Hospice shops to become "receivers". Small community groups can also apply to become receivers, says Brown.
The receivers will be entitled to regular "shopping sprees" to pick up goods that they can sell in their shops or refurbish in their workshops. He expects the Penrose warehouse to receive up to six truckloads of goods a day when the service starts.
Some of the items picked up by residents and scavengers in the old inorganic system were often quite obscure and/or broken, but the new owner was willing to put the time in to do the repairs. The inorganic truck drivers will be given training in what items can be reused and will, over time, learn to identify more and more items that could find a new home.
The warehouse operation is a stop-gap measure. Over the next 12 years the council hopes that recovered inorganic material will be delivered to 12 community run reuse/recycling centres across Auckland - the first of which are already up and running in Waiuku and Helensville.
Waiuku Zero Waste grew out of a local 'men's shed' and now operates a recycle centre in the local transfer station. Staff members aim to divert 75 per cent of the "rubbish" coming in to the transfer station to its shop, the "Waiuku Junktion, and a workshop.
"The variety of what comes in just blows you away," says Sue Wallis, general manager of Waiuku Zero Waste Limited.
One advantage of the new service for local Waiuku residents is that once they've been through the recycling centre there is less in their load, reducing their dump fees.
People perceive things that can be recycled or reused in different ways. A classic example of this is the frame of old broken patio umbrellas, which most Kiwis class as waste. But Xtreme Zero Waste Raglan, which has been operating for 15 years and is seen as an example for Auckland sells a good number of them to gardeners who turn them upside down and use them as bean poles.
Another example from Raglan is old out-of-date briefcases. One enterprising customer buys these, as well as old electronics and turns them into solar-powered stereos, which he then on sells.
At Waiuku, like Raglan, staff members and volunteers fix and repurpose items in the workshop - with everything from bicycles to washing machines.
Waiuku's staff members even remove nails from wood and resell it. If the wood is too rotten to sell it is sent to a company called Kalista, which chips it to be used to fuel kilns.
Auckland Council is currently working with an existing community resource recovery service in Helensville to streamline its operation. The next service off the blocks is expected to be in Devonport where the council is currently negotiating with a community collective to operate a recycling centre. Other community groups in Mangere, Papakura and elsewhere are champing at the bit to get started.
For the 12 centres to be a success, members of the public will have to change their behaviour in the way they have in Raglan and Waiuku. Brown says once this happens there should be no need for warehouses such as CRN's one in Penrose. His job will be done.
Each of the centres will have its own ideas on how to reuse collected materials. The council already holds networking meetings for these groups to encourage a joint approach. They can share knowledge and materials. If one centre has too many pots and pans and another needs them for its community two problems can be solved at once.
The ultimate aim, says Sood, is for the centres to be financially self-sustaining. "They would be making money out of selling the stuff or other different ways of getting money in."
Other forms of funding, such as government subsidies to train and employ disabled and/or unemployed people, may be applied for, says Sood. Some centres may also make money from providing educational workshops for the community.
Sood admits that there will be an element of material that the community groups won't be able to reuse or recycle and this will find its way to the landfills.
She hopes over time that the community or business will find innovative ways to deal with these products. New social enterprises will emerge over time to take economic advantage of currently unwanted inorganic materials, she says.
"There may not be an answer for every product today, but there are innovative people in this world who think of very creative ways of dealing with stuff," says Sood. "People are always coming up with new ideas. It is amazing how people think outside the box. We think: 'I don't know what I am going to do with it', and these people say: 'I am going to think of something'. Sood recently met someone who was looking at ways of recycle the metal and other materials from old matresses.
She adds that there also needs to be a big push for manufacturers to make them longer lasting and easier to reuse and recycle."
The ultimate test of the new inorganic system for Auckland will be whether, a year down the track, there has been a reduction of the current 25,000 tonnes going to landfill. If there is, then the new inorganic system will have proved that organised waste recovery works better than scavenging. If not, the council will have more work to do to streamline the new methodology. It can't go back. With 700,000 more people expected to live in Auckland in 30 years' time the council is backing - and banking on - both community and business to step up.
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