Dunedin (Friday, 29 November 2024) – Spring has well and truly sprung, and so too has demand for Dunedin’s organics recycling service.

Dunedin City Council Group Manager Waste and Environmental Solutions Chris Henderson says in November alone, about 2000 tonnes of organic material has been collected in the city’s new green organic recycling bins.

“That means 2000 tonnes of material going to our contractor’s organics processing facility for recycling, rather than being dumped in our city’s landfill, which is a fantastic result for our community and a great effort by our contractors.

“The significant increase in green waste volumes during spring does put pressure on our contractors, however, so we’ve been rolling out some changes to help them tackle the spike in demand.”

At present, EnviroNZ uses a fleet of colour-coded trucks for the city’s kerbside collection service, including ‘red’ trucks to collect the city’s rubbish and separate ‘green’ trucks to collect organics recycling.

Due to the high demand for organics recycling, green trucks have been unable to complete their runs within the designated collection times of 7am to 7pm during October and November, Mr Henderson says.

As a result, red trucks that have completed their waste collection runs are now being sent out again to help with organics collection, Mr Henderson says.

“It’s important to note rubbish and organics collections are still being kept entirely separate to ensure proper processing. Organics are still being recycled, not dumped at landfill, even if it is collected by a red truck.

“We’ll review this temporary arrangement depending on demand, but in the meantime it’s another great example of our contractor’s flexibility and shows just how popular our new kerbside collection service is.”

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