News

Aug 02, 2023

WasteNet

Pointed comments in defence of Southland councils’ WasteNet partnership mixed with peptic criticisms of incoming nationwide rules for waste collection and management this week. Invercargill Mayor

Pointed comments in defence of Southland councils’ WasteNet partnership mixed with peptic criticisms of incoming nationwide rules for waste collection and management this week.

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark criticised the Southland and Gore district councils earlier this month for a lack of political leadership to help impel their collective undertaking in WasteNet to improve what he described as the worst waste minimisation results in the country.

He was out of town during the WasteNet advisory group meeting on Tuesday, but another arch critic from the Invercargill City Council (ICC), Cr Ian Pottinger, was there to keep the city’s dissatisfactions about waste issues evident.

However, it was Pottinger who acknowledged that Gore’s performance diverting cleanfill - which is comprised of dirt cement, concrete, gravel, brick, topsoil, sand and rubble -- away from landfills was “a shining light’’ compared to the other councils.

The group chairman Keith Hovell, of Gore, added that “contrary to what’s recently been in the paper, Gore does do recycling of a number of different products’’.

Southland Mayor Rob Scott, citing “recent inferences in the media’’ that WasteNet was not doing anything, looked down at his agenda and said: “There are eight workstreams sitting in front of me that indicate differently’’.

They included preparations for the Government requirement that, from February, kerbside collections throughout the country be standardised to accept the same materials.

Pottinger slated the “ludicrous’’ restriction on which categories of plastic bottles, trays and containers could be accepted in the yellow-topped bins.

Only those marked with recycling symbols 1, 2 and 5 would be able to be collected even though Recycle South, formerly Southland disABility​ Enterprises, had the capacity to handle those marked 4.

City council infrastructure manager Erin Moogan said she understood the three accepted categories made up “very much the lion’s share’’ of that type of product already going into recycling bins nationwide.

Removing other components from the mix would make it easier to move that part of the recycling collection for manufacture without significantly reducing the recycling tonnage.

Another WasteNet workstream was preparing a business case for funding a separate organics collection.

By 2030 all councils must provide a food scraps collection service to reduce emissions from landfill by diverting them for processing.

Each territorial council would have full discretion over the organics processing technology used - such as anaerobic digestion, composting (large and community scale) and vermicomposting, which uses some species of earthworms to enhance the process of organic waste conversion.

Southland has not been an early adopter of this at a civic level. Right now, WasteNet was not only looking at options, but also trying to provide guidance for private enterprises looking to divert their own greenwaste, Moogan said.

Pottinger was again a picture of exasperation about the impact of a new collection bin for Invercargill, saying the focus should be community based.

Consultation had shown the people of Invercargill did not want a new bin, he said.

“They're saying ‘we’re keen to compost and be proactive in this but not to have to pay - because it’s going to cost - to put [organic waste] into a collection bin that goes to some company that puts it into compost and sells it’.’’

Another WasteNet project was investigation into a separate glass collection. A report is due in September after consultation with Bond Contracting Ltd on a collection structure for all three councils.

Other projects involved a range of community and school education programmes, discussion with Mitre 10 on the feasibility of its southern stores becoming a battery disposal facility, and some community grants.

The group’s focus to prevent the contaminations resulting from poor recycling habits by concentrating on education, rather than imposing penalties, until the new Government-imposed rules were better understood drew more criticisms from Pottinger.

He argued education alone was not working.

The city council introduced a measure of enforcement with bin-checking in 2011 but the bylaw empowering this had lapsed.

Moogan said some other councils around the country had taken “quite a stern approach’’ to contamination and were taking people's bins away and requiring them to pay a fine to get them back.

“There’s been a lot of work done by other councils – which we are confirming for us in Southland, at the moment – around the legal enforceability of that. We want to ensure we’re not making empty threats,’’ she said.

But with the upcoming changes, the WasteNet approach had been akin to what was undertaken with the introduction of seatbelts – to concentrate on ensuring the understanding was there, before moving to penalties.