Whitianga's recycling centre was full to bursting on Monday as holidaymakers continue to quench their thirst during the hot summer. Photo/Debbie Harrison.
Whitianga's recycling centre was full to bursting on Monday as holidaymakers continue to quench their thirst during the hot summer. Photo/Debbie Harrison.
The holidaymaker-soaked Thames-Coromandel district produces the most amount of recycling over the busy summer holiday period.
Grahame Christian of Smart Environmental, which has contracts with 18 different councils around the country, says tourists produce "exponentially" more rubbish and recycling during their whirlwind summer holiday.
Auckland woman Debbie Harrison saw that for herself on Monday when she went to drop off her recycling at the Whitianga depot.
Rocking up, she was shocked to be confronted with a sea of bottles, which had spilled out from the skip bins.
Harrison said the bins had become so full that people just had to pile their bottles up on top of each other until the centre became overloaded.
Bottles, bottles and more bottles, pictured at Whitianga's recycling depot on Monday by Auckland woman Debbie Harrison. Photo/Debbie Harrison.
Christian said while that situation was not normal, it was pretty normal for peak period on the Coromandel.
"Everyone talks about a peak period whether it's Whangarei or northern areas of Rodney, but Thames-Coromandel is just ballistic. It's exponentially the heaviest increase in population in the country including Queenstown and Wanaka as well."
The critical issues were not only the "massive increase in headcount" - which he said spread across the whole peninsula could be manageable.
Instead, holidaymakers flocked to the eastern coast to fill up the homes of absentee owners. Those homes made up about 50 per cent of all households, he said.
"It's concentrated in Whangamata, Whitianga, Whangapoua, Matarangi, those areas, so you get that population density and it's getting worse and worse. We're getting traffic jams on one-way bridges ... we're noticing that incrementally there are just more and more people on the Coromandel."
According to council figures, for most of the year the Thames-Coromandel District population sits around 27,500.
However, at its peak last summer, that swelled to a monster 126,298 people with 28,050 of those based in Whangamata alone.
This summer was their busiest by far and likely exacerbated by not only the hot weather but also the beer shortage last month, when Lion Breweries announced it was struggling to keep up with the demand.
"It's a good problem to have but it does have its compounding issues around knowing how to resource it and sometimes you don't have enough resource. But fortunately we've got a parks and reserve team in the area ... and sometimes we have to throw them into action to support the kerbside recycling collection teams."
Christian estimated recycling and waste during the festive period usually triples, if not quadruples.
"When we started these contracts and relaid out the transfer stations they were designed to handle certain volume, but the volume far exceeds that now."
While the company doubled its truck and trailer fleet during the peak season, the efforts were at times curtailed by traffic jams, especially at Tairua.
While the Coromandel was the busiest district, Tasman region would be the next most popular spot, followed by Queenstown and Wanaka.
"Interestingly enough, we collect in Rotorua and there's been a negligible increase in volume and we do north of the harbour bridge for Auckland and there's been a small decrease."
Christian, who is also on the Waste Management Institute of New Zealand board, said Kiwis did care about the environment and recycling but more was needed to target the producers of goods who were more often using plastic as wrapping.
"We should be banning plastic bags, reducing the volume of plastic that comes out now in produce, there's a lot of work that has to be done in that end first."
