New Kerbside Collection Service For Dunedin – Contracts Awarded, Start Date Announced.

Dunedin (Friday, 30 July 2010) - In the biggest shake-up to the city’s kerbside recycling and rubbish collections since amalgamation Dunedin residents are to get a significantly expanded kerbside collection service that will see the introduction of wheelie bins, special fortnightly collections for glass only and an alternating fortnightly collection of a greater range of recyclable materials.

Chairman of the Council’s Infrastructure Services committee, Cr Andrew Noone, said today “This new service ticks all the boxes set out in the Council’s Waste Strategy – more recycling materials, less rubbish to the landfill, a cleaner and safer service using the wheelie bins our extensive consultation showed was the ratepayer’s preferred option – and a brand new recycling park to service the expanded collections.”

Dunedin’s new and upgraded recycling services will be launched in February next year, following the signing of a seven-year, $24.8 million contract with EnviroWay which will see the local services provided by local operators linked to a major national refuse collection operator.

DCC General Manager City Environment, Tony Avery, today announced the new service will begin across the city from 28 February 2011.

In the coming months the infrastructure for the new service – state of the art collection trucks and a new purpose-built sorting plant – will be put in place ready for the service to begin.

One of the features of the new service will be the establishment of a Resource Recovery Park adjacent to the current Green Island Landfill on Brighton Road to handle all the recyclable materials. The park will operate as a joint venture with EnviroWay as the principal contractor working with partners Full Circle Recycling – Carter Holt, Hall Brothers and Cargill Enterprises.

Today’s announcement follows several years of public consultation and a competitive tender process.

Household rubbish collection will remain the same under the new regime, with user-pays black bags available from the DCC and local retail outlets, collected once a week. But the recycling service will be greatly enhanced, however.

The existing 40 litre blue crates will be used exclusively for glass (bottles and jars only) with a fortnightly collection from February 2011. The glass will be sorted by truck operators as it is collected, providing recycling buyers with a clean source of glass.

Mr Avery says there is a strong domestic and international demand for clean glass for re-use in the wine industry and European Union countries are currently obliged to incorporate 20% of recycled glass in any new product. It is expected the DCC’s contractors will be able to sell as much glass as they can collect - as long as it is not contaminated by other recyclable products.

On alternate weeks a collection of a wider range of recyclable materials will take place.
For this the DCC will provide new 240 litre wheelie bins, or a wheelie bin of 80 litres for those with smaller properties, or for whom the larger bin might pose physical difficulties.
This collection will cover an increased variety of plastic products, polystyrene or foam packaging (with the exception of meat or food contaminated products), untied cardboard, papers, tins and aluminium cans.

Given that there already exists in the city a healthy and competitive market for the collection of green waste no such service is planned by the DCC at this time.

Mr Avery says the new service will cost ratepayers a uniform annual charge of $63 a year, which will take effect on rates bills from July 1 next year, four months after the service is introduced. This figure represents a reduction in the predicted future costs of $77.11.

It is hoped that the cost of collections to the DCC – and therefore ratepayers - will remain stable during the seven year term of the contract if there is a sufficient increase in the volume of recyclable materials collected.

The new service, which is expected to deliver cleaner streets following collections, will also be safer for operators.

ENDS

Discussion Docs: Consultation To Make Child Support Scheme Fairer

Revenue Minister Peter Dunne today launched a discussion document proposing a series of options – including changing how child support is calculated – to make the scheme fairer.

Mr Dunne said he wants New Zealanders’ views on a number of options to improve a child support scheme that “is outdated and sometimes unfair”.

“The reality is that family life in New Zealand has changed considerably in the 18 years since the current scheme was introduced,” Mr Dunne said in releasing the Supporting Children discussion document. More>>