Fallen by the wayside

Lockdown threw recycling schemes around the country into disarray. It also exposed flaws that could be expensive to solve, writes Olivia Wannan.

Coronavirus exposed the cracks in New Zealand’s recycling system, but it also provided a taste of what would happen if we had to deal with our own waste inside a national bubble.

The lockdown threw the system into disarray and exposed how much our cities vary – something waste researchers say must change to keep recycling viable.

Wellington City Council last emptied recycling bins on March 25 and resumed yesterday. Despite some initial confusion, Auckland Council recycled throughout the lockdown.

Meanwhile, Christchurch City Council collected recyclables under alert level 4, but the material went to the landfill. Hastings, Napier and New Plymouth councils resumed kerbside pick-ups on April 27.

Just as each council chooses whether it accepts aerosols, bottle tops and soft plastics, each had to decide in two days whether to maintain or suspend recycling services, from kerbside collections to sorting and processing.

Christchurch City Council resource recovery manager Ross Trotter says collections continued during lockdown to avoid the health risks of stockpiling. ‘‘The quality of some recyclable material will also degrade if not appropriately stored or stockpiled for extended periods.’’

Trotter says recycling staff have always worn personal protective equipment. ‘‘There is now additional site sanitising in place, physical distancing and reinforcing of regular hand washing.’’

But in Wellington, collection and processing methods put staff at too great a risk of contracting Covid-19, mayor Andy Foster says. ‘‘Much of the sorting of the items is done by hand – either at the truck for glass, or at the Oji sorting plant in Seaview,’’ he says.

Wellington City Council’s waste operations manager, Emily Taylor-Hall, fears the capital is developing bad habits, as recycling bins left on streets during the lockdown have been spotted with some concerning additions: ‘‘They now have glass in them, or grass clippings or dog poo bags.’’

These would likely contaminate the recyclable materials in the bin and any neighbouring ones – a whole truckload may need to be dumped at the landfill, she says. ‘‘There will be lots of people who’ve been very diligent about keeping their recycling really clean and it would be a shame for their efforts to go to waste.’’

Paper thin

Even if clean and lovingly sorted, some plastics and paper in your kerbside bin may end up in landfills, but only partly thanks to Covid-19.

All the paper and light card collected by Auckland Council in April was dumped in landfill – not for health and safety reasons, but because the council couldn’t find anyone to take it.

The papermills in India that accepted the city’s material had closed due to the pandemic. This month the council announced it had found a new supplier.

Christchurch is currently storing paper, but warned some may have to go to landfill. For the capital, Taylor-Hall says the issue with paper and light card ‘‘has been brewing for a while’’.

Since late 2019, international paper recyclers have tightened their standards. Previously, a bale of paper was accepted as long as there was less than 5 per cent soiled or non-paper items (known as contamination). Now that number’s down to 0.5 per cent.

‘‘You’re looking at introducing five or six extra steps, just to get to that low contamination level,’’ Taylor-Hall says.

Auckland Council waste solutions general manager Parul Sood says the additional sorting comes at an extra cost to ratepayers. ‘‘People tend to underestimate the impact of lazy recycling.’’

There are sorting machines able to scan each item (with a laser or camera) as it moves along a conveyor, determine what it’s made from, and sort it accordingly. These are capable of meeting the new contamination standards, but don’t come cheap.

Recycling company Green Gorilla recently opened a

$9.5 million plant in Auckland with this optical sorting technology. The Government put nearly $3.1m towards the facility.

There was a small hitch with the opening, with operations beginning as the country went into lockdown, chief executive Elaine Morgan says. ‘‘We were probably operating at one-fifth of our capacity.’’

The system sorts dry waste so thoroughly that customers can use one bin for all recyclables and non-recyclables, Morgan says. ‘‘They don’t have to have all these different bins.’’

However, Green Gorilla sorts only commercial and industrial waste – not residential. Morgan says commercial waste is often cleaner and more desirable to recyclers than the material coming from residents’ kerbside bins.

Even before lockdowns cut off international markets, onshore recycling facilities were floated as one much-needed solution to New Zealand’s recycling woes.

To help fund new equipment and facilities, the Ministry for the Environment is proposing to increase the waste disposal levy – currently $10 per tonne of rubbish – to a maximum of $60 per tonne of waste sent to

STUFF Recycling staff wore protective equipment even before lockdown to guard against the hazards of handling waste. While some councils continued collections, Wellington took the view that staff were at too much risk, and recycling piled up in the streets, right.