The items you should not put into your recycling bin:

Plastic bags

Chip and cookie packets / Plastic Straws

Batteries

Gas bottles

Single use paper cups

Face masks and gloves

All fabrics/ Towels/ Clothes/ Curtains

Stuffed toys

Bricks

Glassware

Electrical items (Hose and wires)

Medical waste

Tyre

Paint cans

Mirror / light bulbs / window glass

Polystyrene

Food waste

Garden waste

These items either clog the machine, cause fires in the pick up trucks or can not be recylced.

What CAN go into your recycling bin:

(Please rinse items before you place them in your recycling bin)

Pizza boxes (without food inside)

Hard plastic food trays

Tins

Liquid paper board cartons

Plastic takeaway containers

Plastic cookie trays

Broken glass bottles

Glass bottles / glass jars

Plastic bottles/cartons

Cardboard

Paper / newspaper / magazines / Glossy advertising material

Egg cartons

Where can I take my soft plastics?

Some stores around Auckland have special soft plastic recycling bins that anyone can place their soft plastics into.

If you can’t find a soft recycling station near your home then please place them into your rubbish bin.

Where can I recycle my gas bottle and batteries?

Gas bottles can be taken to your local transfer station or community recycling centre

Wondering how to get ride of the other items that can’t go into your recycle bin?

Go to Auckland Council website or go here – HOW TO GET RID OF UNWANTED ITEMS

Over the past few weeks, a few locals have individually taken it upon themselves to go for walks and pick up the rubbish from the car parks and roads.

Some locals collect at least one massive bag of rubbish or more in ten minutes of picking up rubbish.

Locals have had enough as the rubbish is continual and hurting their community.

Now, Salazar and Filip, two of the concerned locals have discussed their concern with the Upper Harbour Local Board.

The Upper Harbour Local Board has allocated $58,000 to the cause, to ensure council members are checking up and reminding the builders to dispose of their rubbish correctly.

Likewise, the community has organized clean-up days that anyone can join to help make their community clean again.

It’s great to see our local communities coming together to create cleaner suburbs in Auckland.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

On September 19^th one person in a Christchurch isolation facility tested positive for Covid -19 and spend 14 days in isolation.

After the 14 days and testing negative twice, the person flew from Christchurch to Auckland on September the 11^th and infected one other person on the flight.

So how did this happen?

Through contact tracing, the ministry of health believes that the first person that tested negative twice before leaving isolation contracted the sickness at the end of their stay through touching a rubbish bin in the quarantine facility.

Dr Caroline McElnay, the director of public health states “While we cannot be certain, our hypothesis is that the virus may have been transmitted to a person … via the surface of a rubbish bin, which was used by another returnee who was likely infectious at the facility.”

The cc footage at the isolation facility has shown that the rubbish bin was the common source of contact between the two people before one of them left isolation.

An intense investigation found that no other person has been infected on the flight or by the two flight cases in the community.

While this case is unique and happened in isolation, reminders of hand hygiene is being emphasised more and more.

So how does this affect you?

While you may think no one touches your private rubbish bin when you place it on the curb, this may not be the case. Many people can walk pass and touch your rubbish bin without your knowledge.

Therefore, it is important to sanitize your inside and outside bins with disinfectant wipes or spray. On top of this, washing your hands after you touch your rubbish bin is important to prevent the spread of germs.

Likewise, avoid touching the surface of public waste bins when throwing away your rubbish when out and about.

Remember if everyone washes their hands, the spread of covis-19 will decrease significantly.

Source one

Source two

There is no doubt that Covid -19 slowed down and effected waste organizations and businesses, therefore, Eugenie Sage says the focus for this year’s funding from the waste minimisation fund is now falling on “upgrading waste systems so they are resilient for the future” and working with “10 to 20 projects of strategic importance to waste minimisation as New Zealand responds to Covid-19.”

The result of the proposal is said to bring about more jobs and reduce the large amount of waste going into landfills.

However, the waste minimisation fund retrieves its money from levy charges from landfills, therefore, if the government wants to increase the waste minimisation fund to reduce waste, reuse and recycle more efficiently, the landfill charges will increase for average kiwis.

This means residential rubbish bags and bin costs could increase by 33 cents per bag/bin, going from $2.50 a bag to $2.83 a bag.

Not only that, but the landfill charge would increase from $10 a tonne to $60 a tonne, which means simply taking your rubbish to the tip gets more and more expensive, resulting in the government waste minimisation fund making up to $250 million extra a year up from the already $220 million it already receives.

The definition of the waste minimisation fund is said to provide “funding for projects that promote or achieve waste minimisation” and “helps increase resource efficiency, reuse, recovery and recycling, and decrease waste to landfill.”

The fund money will be spilt, half of the money will go to the local councils to spend “in accordance with their waste management and minimisation plans” while the other half of the money will be managed by the ministry for the environment.

“The purpose of the act is to encourage waste minimisation and a decrease in waste disposal.” – Eugenie Sage.

The new proposal isn’t supported by everyone, the Taxpayers’ Union have said the new proposal is a “revenue grab that will hammer poorer taxpayers.”

While Louis Houlbrook also disapproved saying that it will have a harsh financial impact on bigger households in poorer areas.

However, unless the fund supports new recycling indicatives and finds a new way to recycle ALL recyclable materials locally, not internationally, then the higher taxes for the landfill won’t help reduce waste in the landfill or reduce waste period.

Resources:

Stuff

One News

Green

MFE

Therefore, your council general and recycling bin schedules are back to their original times and all collection services are running smoothly again.

“Pay as you throw” tags can still be bought from grocery stores and collection services are running normally.

The compost bin collection services are still running in selected areas only.

The Auckland Council dump is now back open to the public again. However, there are some restrictions on what you can dump and may be some delays. For more information click here.

The inorganic service collections should resume from July 1^st. Nevertheless, you still need to book in for your once a year inorganic collection through the Auckland Council, if you would like them to come collect one cubic metre of rubbish from your home. For more information go to the Auckland Council Website.

Recycling Service

Auckland Council recycling service still continues as normal. Although, during lockdown, the recycling collections headed straight to landfill with all the other rubbish due to covid-19 restrictions; instead of going to the recycling centres to be recycled.

Now that lockdown is over, the Auckland recycling collections are picking up speed again and sending as much recycling as they can to recycling centres ever since May.

However, since Covid-19, the recycling world has changed, and some recycling materials can’t be sent to overseas buyers to be recycled. Therefore, plastics that are numbered 3-7 are still being sent to the dump as the council are still awaiting a solution to recycle these.

This means 4% of recycling plastics are going to landfill.

However, this does not affect your Council recycling bin collection, as services run as normal.

Council encourages less waste

The Auckland Council is encouraging Aucklander’s to create less waste by encouraging everyone to eat food that is normally throw away but safe to eat, such as bread crust and broccoli stalks.

On top of this, they are encouraging composting food scraps instead of throwing them in the general bin.

How can you do your part?

To reduce waste, you can go to your local refill store which sells package-less food and drinks and zero-waste, recyclable, biodegradable gifts, bathroom and beauty items. This will reduce the plastic packaging and other waste that comes along with your shopping items from normal stores.

To find out more about this go to:  refillnation.co.nz

0800 Dump Me services are back to normal and we are here if you need rubbish removal. We are a privately owned rubbish removal company that services the Auckland region. We can pick up old furniture, general household rubbish, whiteware, tyres, paint, you name it we can lift and remove it for you. To get an estimate quote click our Quoteme page.

New Zealand council waste bins such as the 120-litre household rubbish bins and the 240 litre recycling bins have been in most cities around New Zealand for a long time. Although, there are some places in New Zealand where you don’t need to use a specific bin to put recycling in and many places do not have organic bins just yet.

Recently two city council teams are trying to improve household waste management by taking the opportunity to introduce new bins to homes.

Waiheke Island in Auckland are introducing new 240 litre recycling wheelie bins to all residence that pay a waste charge, that do not already have one. Previously, residences were allowed to store their recycling in wooden crates, plastic bags and other storage boxes to be collected during roadside waste collection. However, now the council is discarding the old method and only collecting and empty recycling bins. This will happen before June 30^th this year.

Residence are still allowed to put their household general rubbish in special brought rubbish bags for collection. However, these bags will be changed from a red to orange colour. Also, if residence would like a 120-litre bin for their rubbish, they are encouraged to request and change to a wheelie bin.

This change is in an effort to reduce plastic bag usage when storing recycling and to encourage recycle goods to be recycled and not end up in landfill. Reducing landfill waste by reusing goods is the first step to keeping unnecessary items out of landfill and being more environmentally conscience.

Waimate District in Canterbury are also in the process of making changes to their waste collection services. The council are looking into changing their rubbish bins from the general two bin system to a four-bin system.

Instead of just collecting the recycling bin and the rubbish bin, they are trying to put into place an organic, rubbish, recycling and glass bin collection system for all households that have council bins.

The final decision about the bin changes will happen on August 18^th and the new contract will be discussed on July, 1^st 2021.

This is great news for residence of Waimate District and Waiheke Island. Of course, for the rest of us that have recycling bins, we need to be more conscience of what we put into our recycling bins.

During lockdown, recycling habits have grown increasing worse, as households are throwing non-recyclables into their recycling bins.

Waste Manage Institute of New Zealand completed a report called “The truth about plastic recycling in Aotearoa New Zealand.” The report discusses kiwi’s recycling habits and how New Zealand as a whole, needs to improve our recycling.

One of the most shocking results from their study was “the average kiwi household uses 941 plastic containers or bottles per year (extrapolated, this suggests there is an estimated 1.76 billion containers per annum from all households). Of these, 41 per cent by item count could potentially be recycled, but instead end up in landfill.”

On top of this, kiwi households get confused about which plastics should be placed in the recycling bin, which results in the items ending up in landfill instead of being recycled.

This problem can only be solved if all households read the recycling chart and know what goes into the recycling bin and what does not.

Overall, New Zealand’s recycling method isn’t bad, it just needs to be improved. Kiwi households can help by learning which different recycling items need to be placed in the recycling bins and placing only recycling items in it. Likewise, city councils around New Zealand can help by making recycling bins available to all New Zealand regions no matter where they live, as they are starting to do so.

If you need any information about what goes into your recycling bin go to https://www.wasteminz.org.nzwp

If you live in Auckland, and have missed your council rubbish collection and need any rubbish removal service email us on our quote page here.

Hong Kong was the first to see the impact as used masks were found littering their beaches. While in Louisiana and other US states, gloves and wipes littered the streets and it has gotten so bad that people are posting photos on social media of the used sanitary products scattered on the street. People are growing increasingly concerned about the littering of the protective gear as it is a safety hazard and increasing the environmental problem, as all the protective gear is made of plastic and the litter will go down drains and end up in the ocean and be eaten by wild life causing them to choke and die.

USA and Hong Kong are not the only places that have been affected due to Covid-19. Rubbish collection drop off sites in Waterloo and Cambridge in Canada have been shut down and will finally be reopening on May 4^th. Whereas Bangkok has seen a 15% rise in plastic waste due to people spending more time at home and buying delivery services with plastic packaged fast-food due to Covid-19. Also rubbish collection services in Brussels, Belgium has been disrupted due to storage of staff because of the outbreak resulting in some waste not being collected.

So how did Covid-19 affect New Zealand’s waste? As kiwis, we were lucky that our rubbish, recycling and scrap bin collections were considered essential, so we haven’t had any problems with disposing of our usual household rubbish. However, Auckland Council announced on the 1^st of April that covid-19 had affected the process of disposing of paper and cardboard waste produced and disposed of by households. Auckland’s paper and cardboard waste will be dumped into landfills until further notice rather than being recycled. This is due to changes in the international trade and buying of processing paper recyclables. (Source)

As well as paper and cardboard being placed in landfill, the Auckland council inorganic collections are being postponed from the 26^th of March, and no bin removals, exchanges or minor repairs will be done until further notice.

Also, the Waitakere Refuse and Recycling Centre has decreased its hours to the public and is only accepting refuse and green waste.

Here’s where we can help! Our team can come pick up and clear any rubbish and garden waste that you have accumulated over the level 4 period. Whether it’s the inorganic collection, a single item, green waste or hazardous waste, we can dispose of it for you. Just send us an email or call us on 0800 386 763 for an estimated quote.