Over the next few years, the way Aucklanders dispose of waste will be transformed as Auckland Council ramps up changes that will help deliver the vision of zero waste by 2040.
It will mean changes for how Auckland households deal with waste and big changes to the services the council provides. These will ultimately result in improvements to Auckland’s natural environment, on a scale that is one of the biggest local government areas in Australasia.
Changes to inorganic collections started towards the end of 2015. By introducing a booking service for inorganic collections, the council hopes to tackle the ongoing problem of illegal dumping on roadsides.
Food waste collections to follow
This will be followed by changes to recycling, starting a food waste collection in all urban areas, and eventually extending user-pays rubbish collection to all of Auckland.
The council will also be developing community recycling centres around the region, to create a new resource recovery network.
This is all to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill. In the medium term, the council aims to reduce domestic kerbside waste to landfill by 30 per cent per capita by 2018.
Keeping Aucklanders informed
With so many changes about to take place for over 500,000 households, the council will be embarking on a public awareness campaign to give residents plenty of notice when changes will be taking place.
“The scale of the changes taking place over the next few years will be some of the biggest that Auckland residents will have seen,” says Ian Stupple, Manager Waste Solutions.
“It is very important that we make sure every resident gets the information they need about the changes, as well as educating them about the huge benefits of separating recycling and food waste from the rubbish that’s destined for landfill.”
Waste levy covers most costs
A lot of the costs for the promotion of the changes to waste minimisation services including recycling and the future introduction of the food waste service will be covered by the waste levy. This is a national levy collected by the Ministry of the Environment from landfills and distributed to councils to fund waste minimisation initiatives.
Costs associated with the promotion of council’s user-pays rubbish services are covered by user pays charges.
Overall, the council's public information waste minimisation campaigns have a budget of $1.48 million the 2015/2016 financial year for promoting activities, including recycling changes and new inorganics service. This covers a range of elements for the waste minimisation campaigns, including advertising, delivery of information to households, social media, marketing, publicity and printing.
