Review may bin recycling crates
Hutt News
The continues its series on recycling. This week NIcholas Boyack talks to council officer Jez Partridge.
Relief for Lower Hutt residents frustrated by wind blown recycling littering their streets, could be on its way.
The Hutt City Council is reviewing rubbish collection and one of the issues being looked at is using wheelie bins instead of open crates for recycling. Council environmental manager Jez Partridge said finding the best way to recycle was not straight-forward.
Across the city the number of people who used kerbside recycling varied greatly from suburb to suburb.
Wainuiomata had a low rate of kerbside recycling but its recycling station got a lot of use.
The cost could not be ignored with the price of providing every household with wheelie bins running in to millions of dollars.
There were a number of narrow steep streets on the Western Hills where putting out wheelie bins for plastics, glass and paper could be difficult. And using wheelie bins for recycling would not necessarily be the end of the wind blown rubbish problem, as bins fall over in the wind.
The council was, however, weighing up a clip system that made it harder for bins to blow open.
Partridge would not be drawn on whether having open recycling crates in such a windy city was sensible.
He did, however, present a strong case for recycling.
‘‘I want to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfills. A lot of these products are made out of oil, which creates carbon emissions… creating a landfill is also very expensive.’’
Partridge believed that people who recycled were more likely to take a general interest in the environment,
‘‘It is all about doing the right thing and being socially minded and being a tidy kiwi.’’
It is up the council, he said, to set a good example.
The council admin building had its own recycling station and staff were encouraged to recycle.
One area he would like to see some big changes in was the use of plastics.
Plastic bags go to Australia for recycling. That not only involves the use of oil to ship it to Australia but it also makes it expensive for New Zealand firms recycling it in to products such as seats.
The best way to deal with plastics bags was reducing their use.
Recycling made people aware of how much plastic they used and Partridge would also like all retailers to charge for bags.
‘‘It is amazing how people change their habits if they have to pay 10 cents.’’
Partridge expects to have the results of the study by the end of the month.
He hoped it would clarify the community’s attitude to recycling and provide him with data he can take to councillors on how recycling in the city could be improved. Only time will tell if that involves replacing open crates with wheelie bins.