More work needed for Timaru’s recycling, says waste management supervisor

As Timaru’s council works to reduce the amount of contamination in its kerbside recycling, reporter Matthew Littlewood was invited to its waste management material recovery facility at Redruth to see what happens in the recycling process.

The Timaru District, once home to a community of recycling champions, has slipped.

Hundreds of tonnes of contaminated material has been sent to Timaru’s landfill over the past few months, sparking a warning from the district council that it could cost the district millions of dollars to clean up.

With more than 45 per cent of recyclable material ending up in landfill because of contamination, in the first four months of this financial year (July-October), the Timaru District Council launched the What’s In My Bin campaign in December, to promote better recycling. The figures remained in the mid-40s in January.

The recycling champion status is one Timaru’s waste management operator is confident the district can return to , but says people need to work on separating waste.

READ MORE:
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* Timaru District Council launches ‘what’s in my bin’ campaign as recycling slips

Speaking to Stuff at the Redruth facility, waste management material recovery facility operations supervisor Paulo Barradas said the public was recycling about 56 per cent of its materials properly and there are a number of issues over separation of materials.

While the council uses a three bin system, there has recently been a spike in the number of people putting the wrong materials into the wrong bins.

“Before Covid-19, everything was much better than that,’’ Barradas said.

“There were so many mixed messages about recycling during and after Covid-19, and I think too many people got confused and got out of the habit.’’

“But the most important thing is that everyone identifies what needs to be recycled.”

He said collection trucks have cameras installed that the drivers can use to report on contamination.

“One bin can contaminate the whole truck.”

Although food waste, nappies and liquids were the worst contaminates in yellow bins, Barradas said there had also been issues with people putting large printer cartridges with the rest of the material in their bins, which often caused major leaks and contamination.

He advised people to take printer cartridges to Redruth separately.

He has also found items such as scooters and tri-pods which were in perfectly good order and could have been delivered to The Crow’s Nest by the Redruth Resource Recovery Centre.

People also put towels and other clothes in the bin, often unwashed, he said.

With about 10 people working through the sorting process on the conveyer belt at the facility, Barradas said it was important they didn’t come into contact with contaminated material.

“People have to separate the contaminated material with their own hands. It’s incredibly messy,” he said.

“I think everyone wants to do the right thing, they just need the right information and incentives.”

Barradas said the facility had an eddy current that extracts aluminium cans. A magnetic conveyor extracts the steel cans and the optical sorter has a near infrared sensor (NIR) that can determine the difference between two materials by analysing their composition.

Council special projects consultant Vincie Billante said unlike other councils, Timaru was not considering increased enforcement to curb poor recycling and waste sorting practices at this stage.

Instead, the council had decided to carry on with its educational campaign What’s In My Bin, which offers prizes for recycling champions and spreads the message about how to best separate materials.

“Once people understand what the right thing to do is, they will by and large comply,” Billante said.

Billante said simple practices, such as removing the bottle tops off plastic bottles, would greatly increase the value of those plastics once they get processed.

There was the opportunity to create “all sorts of things” from recycled plastics, from teddy bears to containers, she said.

She showed off a koala toy as an example, made from 11 plastic bottles.

“Since Covid, there has been a lot of confusion, but all we’re asking is for people to put the right material into the right bins,” she said.

Billante said the council expected a very positive turnaround of the contamination rates in the coming months because the bin stickering project has been such a success.

“When bin stickering began, 330 dirty lids prevented the bin stickering team from adhering the sticker to the underside of the bin lids, compared to less than three weeks later when they were encountering zero dirty lids,” she said.

“But it’s all about taking small steps,” she said.

WHAT CAN GO IN YOUR YELLOW BIN

• 1, 2 and 5 plastics
• Plastic containers (no lids)
• Tins and cans (including empty aerosol cans)
• Paper