Auckland fortnightly rubbish collection will increase illegal dumping – councillor

By RNZ

Rubbish – is what some people think of a proposal to cut Auckland’s household waste collection from weekly to fortnightly.

The idea is part of a plan to get the supercity closer to a zero-waste vision.

Since November, Auckland Council has already been binning bins it says contractors often find empty, in an effort to save ratepayers $1.4 million a year.

And some councillors fear halving household rubbish collection will lead to a dirty city.

Manurewa-Papakura Ward councillor Daniel Newman said he was yet to be convinced it was a good idea.

“I’m trying my very level best to think about how this could work and how it could be convenient and work for my constituents,” Newman told Checkpoint.

“The idea in theory is great because [we] want to encourage people not to dump. But the reality is that some people will need to have that service more regularly.

“A lot of the families that I represent in South Auckland, I think that they will struggle if they go from a weekly to a fortnightly rubbish collection service.”

He was concerned about fly dumping because it was already happening around Auckland.

“I just don’t want our community to be dirty. I don’t want it to be a place where people tip their rubbish out.”

He said some people in council believed once the food scraps bins were well established, households would not need the landfill bins every week.

Newman was not sure that would work.

“When you factor in the additional fly-tipping costs, I don’t think it’s going to save money. I think it’s going to probably come out about the same but with the lack of convenience for households that have gone from weekly to fortnightly.”

A draft of Auckland Council’s Waste Management and Minimisation Plan for 2024 outlines a plan to “transition to a fortnightly kerbside rubbish collection”.

But that would only happen once the kerbside food scrap bins were “well established,” the draft said.

The council’s goal was to incentivise waste reduction.