Backlog of glass for recycling
About one-third of Palmerston North residents have switched to dropping off glass for recyclingwhile kerbside collections have been on hold.
Collections were temporarily suspended at the end of March because the city council did not have enough specialist truck drivers available to carry out the runs.
Acting group manager for resource recovery Bryce Hosking said there was no noticeable change to the number of beer and drink cans going in the general recycling bins.
While people had not switched their shopping habits to buy cans instead of bottles, a lot of people had adjusted to dropping off their own glass.
In the past month, the recycling drop-off centres at Ferguson St, Awapuni and Ashhurst had handled 58 more tonnes of glass than in the previous month.
That was about 35% of the total glass usually collected from the kerbside in a typical month. But that still leaves about 65% of the usual volumes somewhere else, probably in people’s crates, sheds and houses awaiting a return of the service.
Unfortunately, some people had put glass in their general recycling wheelie bins.
That created health and safety risks, as it could smash, putting the people on the sorting lines at risk of injury, or damaging the machines.
If glasswas spotted in a truckload of recycling from 500 homes, the riskwas that the whole lot had to go to landfill instead.
The council had earlier advised it would be making a decision aboutwhen kerbside glass recycling would resume by the end of last week, but there has been no announcement yet.
Hosking said council staff were thinking about how it would cope when households put their stored glass out for collection.
‘‘We expect that there will be a higher number of glass crates out for collection when we recommence the kerbside service and in some cases, households may have more glass than can safely be put out in the single crate.
‘‘We’re working through the plan for how thiswill be addressed as part of our planning for recommencing the glass collection service.’’
The council was also advising people to rinse their bottles before storing them.
While cold water was usually enough, Hosking suggested a hot rinse could be better given bottles were likely to be stored at home for longer, to ensure bottles did not get smelly.
City councillor Leonie Hapeta said she found it frustrating that the service had to be suspended, and that people had to depend on social media somuch to find out what was happening.
She asked how many complaints the council had received about the suspension of the glass collection service.
Hosking was not able to give her a number, but he said it had created a lot of discussion on social media, and the direct calls to the council all received a response.