Aug4 17th Sept - 23rd Sept
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FIRST ON THE STREET
No No 434 718 27 Jan - 3 Feb 201
LAKES WEEKLY BULLETIN BULLETIN
26 J IN O 6 SI BS D E
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Contamination destroying recycling efforts. My thoughts on recycling would stop on the curb. It wasn’t until I documented the journey of the glass bottle, as a video piece for QTV, that I really started to think about it. On the morning of the 27 of August, I followed the SOS trucks and recorded the glamour crane lifts and audio glass clanks from their Frankton run. Once I got my shots, I had to be on-call for the briefed, big dump. There was a problem. “One of the trucks is pretty contaminated. I don’t know if you would want to film this” I wondered how the driver knew. Turns out, the trucks are kitted with a camera inside the hopper, the driver gets a live feed of what comes out of the bin. This was my only opportunity to get this, otherwise I had to wait another two weeks! After a hesitant wait, the ops manager got word of a ‘less’ contaminated load that’ll champion the day. I wondered what it took to deem a load unworthy. As the hopper slowly lifted up, I got the answer! Glass bottles pouring out mixed with tins, beerboxes, a towel, just general household rubbish littered throughout the load. A worker then scans through the huge glassy knoll, pulling out unwanted contaminates with a long pick up stick. The bobcat rotates the glass pile so they can sort through the pile once again. I became overwhelmed with emotion. How could people be so negligent. This hopper was mean to be filled with Glass bottles and Jars ONLY. This wasn’t even the contaminated truck. The driver recorded 20 bins that ruined that load. So now you know, our glass recycling is at the mercy of lazy recyclers. How do we make this message clear!? Glass is uniquely sustainable; it can be used over and over again an infinite number of times! We have the O-I plant in Auckland recycling it! It’s no easy feat to get our glass up there but it can be done. A transit in Christchurch, traversing South to North to get to Auckland but what if it’s contaminated? We bare a hefty landfill bill. There is no room for error – 1 smashed pyrex dish and the load is condemned to landfill. My heart goes out to the staff at the recycling center. It must get depressing to see regular truckloads of glass (that could be reused again) go to landfill. I get the feeling that we haven’t sent any glass up there yet because we can’t get a clean load. I left the scene and wept again. Driving with a headache fury against our complacent human race. How can we drill this in. BLUE recycling BIN is ‘Glass bottles and jars ONLY’! Period. Lauren Prebble QTV Editor/Producer
Phil Twyford, Anna Mickell and Jim Boult at the Mayoral Election Debate at the Queenstown Memorial Centre last Thursday (Photo: Jodi Walters)
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