Whanganui’s kerbside recycling service off the table for 2023

Whanganui will not get kerbside recycling this year. Photo / NZME

Whanganui District Council’s kerbside recycling service may not get under way until 2024.

It was originally due to begin on July 1 this year, in what the council described last month as an “aggressive and ambitious time frame”.

Project manager Trish Taylor-Pope told the council’s operations and performance committee that there had been a delay in the tender applications, which were still being evaluated.

A food scraps collection trial is due to start in Whanganui next year and Taylor-Pope said a funding application for it had been submitted to the Ministry for Environment.

Approval hadn’t been confirmed but it was “imminent”.

Kerbside recycling won’t feature in council rates until next year’s annual plan.

Acting mayor Helen Craig said it was always unlikely the service would have got off the ground on the proposed date of July 1.

“It’s disappointing, I’d like to have it in now.

“We take our recycling to our very excellent recycling service (Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre) but we’re busy and it would be great to just put a bin out every one or two weeks.”

Councillor Rob Vinsen, the chair of the council’s waste and sustainability advisory group, said he thought it could be in action by March or April next year.

Rob Vinsen says the kerbside service is "a logistical exercise". Photo / Bevan Conley

“This (delay) is not unexpected because we were aware contractors had said it took about a year to ‘tool-up’ - to get new trucks, 68,000 bins, all these sorts of things,” he said.

“This is a logistical exercise. Think about all those bins that need to be delivered out. Just doing that would take quite a bit of time.”

Households wouldn’t be able to provide their own recycling bins, Vinsen said.

He and Craig didn’t believe the Government’s recent waste policy announcement would impact the delivery of Whanganui’s service.

Environment Minister David Parker said on Wednesday that households in urban areas would have a standardised recycling service by 2027 and a household food scraps collection by 2030.

Items listed in the scheme were glass bottles and jars, paper and cardboard, plastic bottles and containers from plastic types 1, 2, and 5, and aluminium and steel tins and cans.

Craig said those were the only items that would be collected in Whanganui anyway.

“There is no market for any of the rest - you can’t get rid of it anywhere.

“Some councils, like in Auckland I believe, still collect just about everything. I’m assuming they take a lot to landfill.”

The Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre stopped accepting plastic types 3, 4, 6 and 7 at the end of 2020.

Craig said while most councils around New Zealand already had kerbside recycling services, there could be extra demand for contractors as a result of the Government’s legislation.

“I think it will start before July 1, 2024 but we just don’t have a date. That will take time to work its way through.”