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Complimentary supplement
Recycling under scrutiny
Just some of the council staff that work to audit the Ashburton District Council’s recycling bins are (from left) Justin Bloomfield, Shane Enright and Glen Sole. PHOTO JAIME PITT-MACKAY 200219-JPM-0007
BY JAIME PITT-MACKAY JAIME.P@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
Sifting through the district’s recycling might not seem like the most appealing job, but the role of those who audit recycling bins for the Ashburton District Council are in the position to help save ratepayers money. This past month the council has begun audits on recycling bins around the district to get a snapshot of what the people in the district are doing with their recycling bins, revealing signifi-
cant gaps in the understanding of what can be recycled. Workers begin the audit by collecting 100 bins worth of recycling and noting down the address before taking it back to the resource recovery park to be inspected and placed in to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ piles. “The bags are labelled for auditing back at the resource recovery park. Photos are taken of each bag and its contents. A letter and an education pamphlet is then sent to each audited property letting them know they have either
binned it right, or they need to lift their recycling game,” group manager service delivery Neil McCann said. “Properties that show they really don’t understand the system are then monitored and follow-up visits are done to check to see if things are improving. “People come out and chat with our staff, they love to learn how they’re doing and if they’ve improved, we’ve had some good feedback since we started doing this.
“Only one of the bins rechecked from our last audit has failed its next follow-up audit.” The items that make repeat appearances are items like clothing, bottles, polystyrene and items that could be reused as opposed to them being recycled. “Most failures come from confusion about what’s recyclable and what’s re-usable. The yellow bin is only for recyclables not re-useable items like clothing, electrical appliances and kids’ toys,” he said.
“The next biggest issue is dirty recycling. People have to work with this stuff, unwashed recycling and food goes rotten and devalues the material making it hard to sell on to buyers. Once people understand why it’s important to put only clean recyclables in their bin, the rest is easy. “A rejected load of recycling will cost ratepayers approximately $5000, so the consequences of this work will reduce the overall cost of waste disposal, and benefit all ratepayers.”
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