Now, from July until mid-2025, once a day, an EnviroWaste truck will complete an about 400km round trip to South Canterbury so Dunedin’s recycling can get sorted at Enviro NZ’s high-tech materials recovery facility, which opened in Timaru last year.
By the middle of 2025 a new resource recovery centre will be operational in Dunedin, but by then about 8000 tonnes of recycling will have been trucked out of the region for sorting.
The Otago Daily Times asked the council if it was concerned about wear and tear on roads, or the emissions produced by trucking recycling north for sorting each day.
And while the council indicated the present situation was not ideal, a council spokesman said the mixed recycling would be compacted before being transported, meaning only one truck-and-trailer trip would be needed on State Highway 1 each day.
"We have a preference for Dunedin’s recycling to be managed in the region and the new resource recovery facilities will provide for this by mid-2025," the spokesman said.
"A number of variables will determine how much mixed recycling needs to be transported, but we estimate between 3700 and 4100 tonnes per annum."
He confirmed the 10-year contract with Enviro NZ was not predicated on recycling being done in the city.
The contract includes construction and management of modern resource recovery facilities for recycling and composting.
And the Enviro NZ proposal included the option to use the Timaru sorting plant as a temporary arrangement if required, the spokesman said.
Enviro NZ’s decade-long agreement with Oji Fibre Solutions (OjiFS) lapses at the end of this month and the company did not accept OjiFS’s offer to operate its recovery facility as part of a transitional arrangement while the planned facilities were developed.
As a result, OjiFS is shutting the sorting facility at its Brighton Rd plant, meaning the bulk of staff there will lose their jobs.
An Enviro NZ spokeswoman said Enviro NZ’s high-efficiency Timaru materials recovery facility used artificial intelligence-enhanced optical sorters to recover more quality material for reuse.
She also said the company was partnering with council to build a new state-of-the-art materials recovery facility in Dunedin, due to open in 2025.
"When it’s operational, the city’s kerbside recycling will be processed there.
"To reach its end markets, currently much of Dunedin’s recycling travels north to Christchurch and Auckland once it is processed.
"Timaru is on the way," the spokeswoman said.
