WASTEBUSTERS
Rising from the ashes
After a twoandahalf year journey during which Central Otago Wastebusters has literally risen from the ashes, the end of a court hearing has drawn a trying chapter to a close. Pam Jones talks to Wastebusters general manager Sue Coutts about the rebuilding of a community hub that counts itself as one of New Zealand’s best.
THEY ‘‘toughed it out’’, rebuilt themselves and kept their promise to the community.
Now Alexandra Wastebusters staff and volunteers are ‘‘finally’’ back where they were two and ahalf years ago, before a fire razed their premises and they lost almost everything.
‘‘I feel like we’re kind of back at the point where we could have been if we hadn’t had the fire,’’ Ms Coutts said.
‘‘We’ve had a period of survival and getting through it, doing the best we can . . . Now we’re feeling quite optimistic about the future.’’
It was on September 3, 2015, that the positive path on which Wastebusters was travelling was so dramatically changed.
That night, the Alexandra Wastebusters building burned to the ground, destroying the facility’s recycling plant and recycling shop.
The fire devastated the Wastebusters and broader Alexandra community, as well as those from Wanaka Wastebusters, the organisation that had only taken over the running of the Alexandra facility, then known as Central Otago Wastebusters, three months previously.
Alexandra man Aaron
Gourlay (43) was yesterday found not guilty of lighting the fire which destroyed the building.
The jury found Gourlay guilty on one charge of deliberately setting fire to a car belonging to a former Wastebusters colleague but acquitted him on three other car arsons and two charges of intentional damage involving puncturing tyres of two other vehicles.
He was remanded for sentencing on the one guilty charge.
Ms Coutts said it had been a ‘‘big challenge starting from scratch’’ but she was glad a verdict had been reached.
‘‘The court case is a formality. It has more to do with the police . . . We didn’t have any
expectation about what the outcome would be.’’
She said their main focus was to keep the shop running.
‘‘It’s been a long time since the fire. There was emotion in the first year [after the fire] then we got back up and running. We’ve worked hard to stay positive.’’
Now that it was over, it was time to move on, she said.
She remembered the positive frame of mind Wastebusters staff and volunteers had been in before the fire, having just done ‘‘a good cleanup’’ and sorting out of the Alexandra facility and being ready to put plans for the future into action.
The fire changed all that.
Staff and volunteers were then faced with a different, ‘‘pretty tough’’ pathway that threw significant practical and emotional challenges at them.
The fire was ‘‘a pretty big blow’’, a ‘‘gamechanger’’. But the first decision made was to keep going in whatever way possible, and Ms Coutts said she and her team were most proud of ‘‘keeping their promise to the community’’.
‘‘It could have gone two ways. We could have given up — and I don’t think anyone would have blamed us if we did — but I really feel proud that we didn’t.
‘‘We knew we had to double down and put everything in to make it work, but at Wastebusters one thing we do is keep our promises.
‘‘We had said we would look after our customers, and I just felt really strongly that we would stick to what we said and keep our promise to make the recycling work.’’
She praised the commitment of the Wastebusters team and Central Otago public.
Once the physical cleanup after the fire was done, a group of containers was brought in and the recycling shop was again open for business.
Wastebusters put out a successful call for people to both donate goods and shop at the centre.
It also kept up its recycling service for commercial customers, Ms Coutts said.
‘‘A lot of people in the community really got behind Wastebusters and did what they could to support us,’’ Ms Coutts said.
Looking back, she remembers various milestones which put into perspective the difficulties with which Wastebusters staff and volunteers were faced.
‘‘Getting the flush toilet back was pretty awesome. That happened about two months after the fire.
‘‘And getting a shipping container for a proper smoko room was pretty cool. too. It had running water and plugs for electricity.’’
Staff and volunteers also spent the first six months after the fire sorting recycling by hand. Getting a replacement plant in January 2016 was another significant milestone, Ms Coutts said.
The Dunedin District Court hearing into Gourlay’s case over the past few weeks had been stressful for Wastebusters staff and volunteers — many of whom had given evidence — and ‘‘brought back the emotion’’ of the fire, Ms Coutts said.
The Wastebusters community had ‘‘kept talking to each other’’ to provide support, and had also been well supported by police.
The optimism the Wastebusters team now felt about the future was also a ‘‘tricky’’ and at times uncomfortable reminder of the optimism the team had been feeling before the fire, a ‘‘deja vu’’ feeling, Ms Coutts said.
But the team was now determined to look to the future, believing in Wastebusters’ continued place in the district and that grassroots, ‘‘face to face’’ education was the key to ‘‘a smarter society’’ and people committing to reduce, reuse and recycle. Wastebusters was also hopeful of a firmer commitment to environmental issues from the Labourled government than seen from previous governments, Ms Coutts said.
The container shops at the Alexandra centre had remained, been added to and thrived, she said.
‘‘The customers love them.’’ And the community continued to provide vital support to the centre.
‘‘If they [the community] want to have a cool recycling shop, then you have to drop things off [donate items] and then come shopping and buy things.’’
She said there were not many ‘‘great recycling centres’’ around the country, but considered the Alexandra centre, and its Wanaka counterpart, to be among the best.
‘‘It’s [Alexandra centre] a great little community recycling centre that’s going from strength to strength.’’