End of treasure hunt
SORTING through trash to find treasures on inorganics day has been a ritual for generations of Kiwis.
But this year will be the final for the country’s biggest council, and one of the few local authorities to have continued the kerbside collections.
No longer will there be the annual – and more recently biennial – ceremony of finding out when inorganics day is for your street, laying your things out, grinning and bearing the collectors pocketing the stuff you couldn’t be bothered fixing and then waiting for the council to pick up the rest.
Instead, residents will have to personally organise their own collections through Auckland Council, as part of a regional service aimed at cutting down on the amount of recyclables going to landfill. Collection centres will also be built.
Under the new system, says solid waste manager Ian Stupple, it’s not intended people will ‘‘help themselves’’ to other people’s inorganics. Dumping your unwanted possessions outside designated hours will be, and is already considered, illegal.
To record the ending of an era, Sunday News went to the streets of Mt Wellington on Valentine’s Day to witness the East Auckland suburb’s final inorganic collection.
Husbands are dragging their wives to the streets to go hunting for the kind of treasure you can’t buy at a jewellery store.
Until July, residents of designated streets, starting in East Auckland and moving like a tidal wave towards Waitakere, will pop their broken tellies, worn sofas and bits of broken luggage over the fence to forget about. There they languish until someone spots something special in them, picks them up, dusts them off and makes them serve a purpose. A bit like dating.
Mt Wellington Main Highway is busy and its broken yellow lines deter people from stopping too long. There are precious few piles of inorganic treasure troves. A lone mattress with an obscenity scrawled on the side in black marker. A pair of black pleather shoes. Some hoses, a lone cardboard box and a couple of panes of glass. A brown leather suitcase with stickers but no wheels.
Turn a corner onto Barrack Rd and the landscape changes. Laden vehicles, puffing men, heaps and heaps of rubbish.
Tom, ‘‘nearly 60’’, is there. Every weekend for the past few years he has driven around collecting metal from people’s berms. ‘‘It helps pay the bills,’’ he says of his hobby, although in the same short breath says there’s practically no money in it.
‘‘It looks a lot,’’ he says, gesturing to his truck. ‘‘But it’s all bulky rubbish. Once you sort it out you’ll be lucky to pay for the gas and the mileage. You’re paying for diesel and road tax and everything.’’
He’s here with his 24-year-old son. They’re each driving their own vehicles, both full, metal piled high, some electricals too.
They’ve been here since 8am and don’t expect to go home until 6pm. Sweat is rolling down their necks. Why spend your time on a hot summer’s day hauling castoffs for little money?
‘‘It gives us something to do,’’ Tom says. ‘‘You don’t know what you might find when you get here. You might find some nice stuff, furniture for the house.’’
‘‘Things these days aren’t worth getting repaired,’’ he laments. ‘‘It costs more these days to repair something than it does to buy it new, that’s the problem.’’
The key to collection is getting in first, he says. Throw it on the truck and sort it later; there are too many competitors lurking.
A right turn onto Alana Place, where a couple are trawling through a pile of broken furniture, kids’ toys and cement blocks, while the diminutive woman who put out the junk watches on curiously.
Further down, a big van with a trailer behind it is parked up. Propped up outside the back doors are a couple of fridges, a microwave, wood, some more obscure bits of plastic. A man is perched on the street next to his loot, fixing something. He’s collected inorganics for 20 years, he says. Why do it? ‘‘Money,’’ he says.
A family of three – mum, dad, son – are driving a pickup truck groaning with glistening metal and the odd fridge. Just in case there wasn’t enough space, which there isn’t, another trailer is attached. A kind of scrap metal train. Eighteen cents a kilo is what this rubbish is worth at the scrap metal yard, the wife tells me.
Further down, a bloke is collecting hoses and lamps as quickly as the former owner is getting rid of them. A polite smile between thrower and receiver.
Late afternoon and the last of the collectors are doing one final drive-by. There’s still a surprising amount left on the street. A perfectly fine-looking outdoor table set, some mattresses, wood. A mini cab and trailer heaving with microwaves is crawling down Barrack toward the motorway. Its brake lights shine. Out jumps the driver. He’ll have the dining set after all.
Gisborne Council vetoed the kerbside inorganic collections in 2013 because it cost too much. Porirua’s Trash Palace will pick your cast-offs up if you organise things ahead of time. Marlborough residents can drop their stuff at Bluegums Landfill.