On the other hand, parts of the Wakatipu Basin are letting down their side of the Crown Range - with a haphazard approach to separating rubbish from recycling material.
The new three-bin system has been in place for 12 weeks, and Queenstown Lakes District Council maintenance and operations manager, property and infrastructure, Erin Moogan said some areas were ''getting it more right than others''.
''The Hawea community in particular has been very good, making sure there are not other recyclable materials in the glass collection - cans, cardboard, things like that.
''There are a number of pockets around the Wakatipu Basin that aren't doing as well.''
Ms Moogan said Hawea had been ''pushing'' the council to make sure it was ''getting things right in the recycle space'', while some other areas were ''still a bit blase around why this is important''.
The immediate focus for the council was on ensuring glass from the Wakatipu Basin did not end up in the Gibbston Valley landfill - as it had for the past couple of years.
Ms Moogan said so far this year, 277 tonnes of glass from Wakatipu blue bins had gone to Auckland to be turned into new glass products.
That was the ''key change'' from the previous contract, she said.
''Under the previous contract, the Wakatipu component of the glass was going to landfill ... because it wasn't being separated properly,'' Ms Moogan said.
Whether there had been an improvement in what was going into yellow bins - intended for cans, plastics, cardboard and paper - was still being assessed.
Ms Moogan said the council's focus was on ''clean recycling''.
''We don't want people taking a punt: 'Is it recyclable? Is it not? I'll put it in the recycle bin anyway and hope that it is'.
''We've used the terminology of wish-cycling in the past - that if I hope it's recyclable, maybe it will be.''
But there was ''push-back'' from processors which were saying ''if you want us to continue to take your recycling, and you want to have a market for it, it needs to be clean, good-quality recycling'', Ms Moogan said.
''It's around quality, not quantity.''
Ms Moogan said if in doubt, put it in the red bin - which is rubbish that goes to landfill.
In the 2018-19 year, the landfill was the destination for 45,072 tonnes of waste.
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Comments
And what point is being achieved by this? The market for recycled materials is weak at best and we're not exactly running out of landfill space.
Recycling is one of the big con-jobs of our times.