Service’s future in question
Bands from around the Hutt Valley were well represented at the regional heats of the Smokefree Rockquest at Sacred Heart College’s Notre Dame Performing Arts Centre on Saturday. Among the groups that made it through to the Wellington final were Hutt bands The Valve, Ampathy, De Novo, Jetfuel and Alexis Texas. MORE PICTURES, page 23
‘‘The benefit to the city by providing a rate-funded recycling station as a whole needs to be considered’’
The future of Upper Hutt’s ratepayer-funded recycling service is under scrutiny.
Setup and operational costs have been higher than expected while tonnage figures indicate the number of people recycling has not increased, a city council report says.
‘‘The benefit to the city by providing a rate-funded recycling station as a whole needs to be considered,’’ city operations director Lachlan Wallach said.
‘‘If the recycling station is not considered viable, the option of only providing cardboard cages could be looked at.’’
The three-days-a-week drop off station at Park St, north of the CBD, began a 12-month trial in late January.
This came more than three years after the council abandoned kerbside collection, a decision forcing residents wanting to recycle to take up contracts with private companies or travel down the valley to 24-hour bins provided by Hutt City.
The amount of council staff time monitoring the station, its operational cost and the fact the tonnage collected ‘‘closely reflects’’ a drop in kerbside recycling were all factors to consider, Wallach said in a first report on the service.
The setup cost, to April, was $41,000, twice an originally budgeted $20,000 while the full year’s operation was expected to cost another $67,000.
Residents have called for the service to operate daily and while discussions on this have been held with the contractors, Waste Management, the near $170,000 a year price was prohibitive.
‘‘It is hard to understand why those people who choose to use a rates-funded system cannot organise themselves to use the facility when it is open all day, three days a week,’’ Wallach said.
Use of the council service had correlated with a reduction in private collection contracts. For Waste Management alone, these dropped by almost 300, a 12 per cent reduction.
‘‘The tonnage collected at the station closely reflects the decrease in kerbside recycling, which indicates that the number of people recycling has not increased.’’