Whanganui’s new kerbside recycling service to factor in elderly, people with disabilities

Whanganui District Council is making sure no one gets left behind when its kerbside recycling service begins in July.

Each household will get three crates – for plastic and cans, paper and cardboard, and glass bottles and jars – but carrying them to the kerb could be a problem for the elderly or those with disabilities.

Project manager Trish Taylor-Pope said council staff would meet with people individually in the lead-up to the launch to talk through their needs and options.

“There is an assisted service as part of the contract but it’s a case-by-case basis. We will go out and assess what sort of support they need.”

She told the council’s operations and performance committee the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre currently ran a recycling pick-up service so there was “a little bit of a database to start from”.

“We will be in touch with people who need further assistance,” Taylor-Pope said.

Council property and open spaces general manager Sarah O’Hagan said the council would know of some people who needed help but there would be others.

“As part of our build-up to the beginning of the service and after the start date, we will let the general community know that they just need to [call] us and we will make those arrangements.”

Taylor-Pope said the council would bring on additional staff to manage the anticipated increase in inquiries.

“We need to make sure we aren’t putting too much strain on the current team.”

She said public meetings on the service had been booked for the end of April to the start of May and there would be a six-week rollout of crates to households from mid-May to the end of June.

All three crates can be filled with the same category of item if required.

“We’ve had really good feedback from people when we’ve gone to public [information] sessions and that has given us additional information to go back and speak to the contractors with,” Taylor-Pope said.

“We’ll be looking to do the [recycling] pick-up the day before general waste pick-up. That will reduce the number of crates or bins at the kerb.

“It will also allow residents to put whatever contaminated items they might have into general waste, or wash them or fix them.”

Low Cost Bins, which already runs general waste collection services in the city, is the contractor for the kerbside service. Three trucks will be added to its fleet.

Chief operating officer Andrew Sclater said he was enthusiastic about the launch and believed his company’s local knowledge would be crucial.

“As one of the few Kiwi-owned waste and recycling companies, and with our founder Colin Cashmore having lived in Whanganui and built longstanding business contributions to the region, Low Cost is in a unique position to deliver this service.”

Sclater said another important element of the service was its potential to stimulate local employment, thanks in part to the adoption of a crate-based recycling system.

“As well as reducing contamination and improving the quality of recyclables, the crate-based system will provide local job opportunities – with materials being collected and sorted by hand in Whanganui – rather than heading to a mechanical sort line in another region.”

All recyclable materials will be taken to the resource recovery centre to be aggregated, with certain materials being baled.

From there, they will be transported to recycling facilities around the country.

The centre will remain open to the public after the service begins.

It accepts some materials, such as green waste, car seats, car/household batteries and e-waste, that can not be recycled at kerbside.

Taylor-Pope said one thing that helped people recycle in Hastings was a buggy system with clips and platforms so crates could be wheeled to the kerb.

Hastings also uses a three-crate system.

“We are looking at somebody locally who might be able to produce some of those.”

Meanwhile, Taylor-Pope said the council’s food scraps collection trial was going well.

Food scraps are being collected for composting from 400 Whanganui households as part of the 12-week initiative.

Her report to the committee said the amount of contaminated product was below 1 per cent and the weekly diversion of food scraps from landfill was about 550kg.

Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present, his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.