Whanganui District Council begins work on reducing construction and demolition waste in landfills

Stuart Hylton says waste needs to be "broken down by material”. Photo / Bevan Conley

Materials from construction and demolition are pouring into New Zealand landfills and it’s no different in Whanganui.

Whanganui District Council waste advisor Stuart Hylton said across the country, up to 50 per cent of landfill waste came from that sector.

”We (Whanganui) wouldn’t be too far out from that.”

While the council wasn’t in charge of where it ended up, it wanted to “show a bit of leadership” and ideas were being formed on how to minimise waste as much as possible, Hylton said.

It had to be “broken down by material”.

“Can you do something with Gib, for instance”, he said.

“It‘s no good telling a sector they have to deal with it if there’s no way to reuse or recycle it.”

He said there were no facilities nearby to process used Gib sustainably, where it could potentially be broken down and turned into fertiliser.

Transporting it was one option, with preliminary work done on how much that would cost.

A local facility had also been discussed.

Kiwispan Wanganui owner Bruce Morris said as far as he was aware, the closest facility to process Gib was in Canterbury.

He said there had been more focus on waste within the building sector in recent years.

“That was the topic for the guest speaker at the Master Builders conference two years in a row - 2022 and 2023,” Morris said.

“It’s just about education, like other kinds of recycling. We’ll get there eventually.

“Maybe manufacturers and suppliers could get away from wrapping everything in plastic and polystyrene and go back to cardboard. That‘s a bit more recyclable.”

He said Kiwispan minimised waste where it could.

The closest major landfill to Whanganui is Bonny Glen, near Turakina. Photo / Bevan Conley.

“We do a lot of steel buildings, and a lot of our steel goes to recycling. I think it’s around 18 cents per kilo at the moment.

“It probably costs you more to have a couple of guys load it on a truck and drop it there but that‘s just part of it.”

Morris said pilot programmes had been tried out, including having five different bags for different kinds of on-site plastics.

“Maybe manufacturers and suppliers could get away from wrapping everything in plastic and polystyrene and go back to cardboard. That’s a bit more recyclable.

“Then, there’s the plastic drums electricians use or the plastic pipes that the plumbers use.

“With these programmes, we’re figuring out how things work and best practice.”

Whanganui’s waste ends up at the Bonny Glen landfill near Turakina.

Hylton said high-volume materials like concrete and brick could be easily reused and would be ” low-hanging fruit” for council.

There were already operators in Whanganui that broke rubble down to become the base for roading, he said.

“People want to do better for the environment and be green and innovative, some more so than others.

“It’s a matter of us (council) getting together with like-minded people, from the design phase right through to deconstruction.

“It starts with architects designing well, developers and builders, everyone in the sector playing their role.”

He said he would be meeting with the New Plymouth District Council, which had a “construction deconstruction” area in its resource recovery centre.

That could be replicated at Whanganui’s facility.

Meanwhile, a contract for next year’s kerbside recycling service is currently in the negotiation phase.

A food scraps collection trial is set to be launched in February, with 400 households in different parts of Whanganui having the opportunity to participate.

Households will be provided with two food scrap bins - a smaller one for their kitchen and a larger one to dump kitchen scraps into and take to the roadside for collection.

A report from project manager Trish Taylor-Pope says by diverting organic food waste to a high-temperature, rapid composting system where methane emissions are captured, food waste emissions can be significantly reduced.

The anticipated start date for the full food scraps service is July 1 2025.

Council-funded food scraps collection services will be mandated across all New Zealand’s territorial authorities by 2030.

Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.