Three strikes under new bylaw
Residents of the Waimakariri district will get three strikes before council stops picking up their recycling bins under the new Solid Waste Bylaw.
In the past, pigs heads, paint buckets and LPG bottles have all been found in the district’s recycling bins and warnings issued to those responsible.
Under the new bylaw, home owners whose bin pickups have been cancelled will have to pay a fee to the council and write a statement outlining the steps they will take to prevent the issue reoccurring.
Waimakariri District Council staff held a deliberation meeting on Tuesday before the new plan passed to council for a final signoff in its September meeting.
Council solid waste asset manager Kitty Waghorn said the system was already being used in Waimakariri and the bylaw was a way of ‘‘tightening up’’ what was already being done.
‘‘The bylaw gives us the mandate to ensure the right things go into the right bins and that people don’t put out overweight bags, non-council bags, or sharp [objects] that can injure the contractor.’’
She said it was important for residents to remember that when they put non-recyclable items in their bin, people had to sort through contaminated areas and fix machinery it blocked.
The new bylaw also removed some unnecessary rules already covered in existing legislation such as the Litter Act.
Environment Canterbury (ECan) submitted against one of these rules – a perceived ‘‘loosening up’’ of accumulation of waste on private land – which was subsequently reinstated in the bylaw, Waghorn said.
‘‘The Litter Act is quite prescriptive about what it describes as litter. ECan said ‘well, what about tyres, electronic waste and a few other bits and pieces that may not be considered as litter’ [in the act].
‘‘It just makes it a little easier to ensure we don’t end up with things like huge stockpiles of tyres on a property, which is becoming a bit of an issue at the moment in various councils around New Zealand.’’
Waghorn said ECan was one of only two submitters throughout the process. The other was a resident requesting council again look at the three-bin system used in Christchurch, but this had nothing to do with the bylaw, she said.