Recycling shake-up for Hutt

Council officers have recommended a shake-up of Hutt City’s recycling collection system in order to reduce the city’s output of landfill waste.

The proposed system – featuring a 240-litre wheelie bin for paper, plastic and tin, and a separate crate for glass at each household – would bring Lower Hutt into line with Wellington City and Porirua which use similar systems.

The average person in the Wellington region produced over 600 kilograms of landfill waste a year and Hutt City Council sustainability and resilience manager Jo¨rn Scherzer said this amount was climbing. He said the council needed to be diverting as much material from going to landfill as possible.

There was little land for new landfill sites and the Wainuiomata cleanfill showed how little appetite the public had for new tips, particularly near residential areas. It was in everyone’s interests to make the most of the Silverstream landfill’s remaining capacity.

The current system was not ideal as it used 45l and 55l open topped crates which were not suited to windy conditions.

‘‘Plastic, bottles and paper get blown all over the place ... Ultimately we want to prevent recyclables becoming litter.’’

He said the larger bins also meant people could recycle more material and the council could disestablish unstaffed recycling stations, which were prone to being abused by people dumping general waste and contamination.

Collections would be fortnightly, rather than the current weekly services.

The new collection system would cost about $2.2 million a year, or about $69 per household. The current service costs $1.3 million, excluding the $15 cost to each household for a crate.

Hutt City mayor Campbell Barry pledged to replace the crate system as part of his mayoral campaign during the 2019 local body elections. He said recycling collection was a basic council service, which people expected to be of a high standard.

‘‘People across our city are fed up with rubbish littered across the street on collection days,’’ he said.

While Hutt City looks to move on from the long-standing crate system, Upper Hutt will be keeping its sole recycling station for the time being.

Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy said the council would be review its recycling services but no firm plans were in place.

Hutt City was also examining its kerbside refuse collection with officers recommending the introduction of ratesfunded bins to replace its user-pays rubbish bag collection.

The council is undertaking an online survey for ratepayers’ views on refuse and recycling collection before going into its annual plan consultation in April.