How your rubbish is collected
City targets food waste
Legacy Auckland City areas: Ratebased rubbish wheelie bin Legacy Manukau City areas: Ratebased bags (any bag can be used) Legacy North Shore, Waitakere, Papakura and Franklin council areas: User pays orange council bags at a cost of $2.30 per 60 litre bag. Legacy Rodney District areas: No council rubbish collection. What’s changing? By 2019/20 almost all of urban Auckland is to have a user pays, fortnightly wheelie bin rubbish collection, in conjunction with consistent recycling, inorganic and food waste collection. In Rodney, householders will have the choice of remaining with private providers or a council user pays bin. Rural areas of the Super City will have the option of a bin or bag, and have also not been included in plans for food waste collection. Auckland Council wants to get food out of your rubbish, with a city-wide food waste collection to be rolled out by the end of the decade.
The council’s Waste Solutions department manager Ian Stupple said the 23-litre lockable food waste bin, supplemented by a 7-litre kitchen caddy, will be collected from city kerbs each week by 2019/20.
At the moment, the average rubbish bag or bin is almost half-filled with food waste, with about 10 per cent each recyclables and green waste and only the remaining third actual rubbish, he said.
The roll-out is part of a plan for a uniform waste collection system, which will eventually see alternating, user-pays fortnightly kerbside collection of rubbish and recycling from legacy council areas amalgamated to form the Super City six years ago.
That’s part of agreement reached in 2012 as part of the Waste Management and Minimisation Plan, which also set goals on waste reduction targets.
“We’ve done a lot of research on what best practice in the world is — particularly those that are committed to zero waste and food waste collection is quite common,” Stupple said.
Following consultation, rural Auckland households will not be offered food waste collection.
Procurement was under way for a processing plant for the estimated 50,000 tonnes of food waste that will be turned into compost each year.
Revenue from this, and from methane captured and sold back to the grid, will offset the cost of an eventual targeted rate, he said.
A food waste pilot scheme has already been in place for 2000 North Shore households for 21⁄ years.
— Cherie Howie