A survey of Wanaka and Hawea residents' rubbish habits has produced some ‘‘surprising'' but ‘‘fantastic'' results, Wanaka Wastebusters project manager Sophie Ward says.
Wanaka Wastebusters carried out the random phone survey of 251 homes last week as a way of assessing the desirability of Queenstown Lakes District Council's proposed alternative residual waste service in the area.
The service will provide a 120-litre wheelie-bin for each household, with an annual uniform charge of $269, in place of the existing $2 blue garbage bag system.
The survey revealed that of all the households surveyed, 72 per cent produced just 60 litres of rubbish - the equivalent of one blue council garbage bag - or less, and 32 per cent produced less than 30 litres.
Such results confirmed what Wanaka Wastebusters had already been hearing on an anecdotal level - that people in the Wanaka area were taking the waste minimisation message on board.
However, such positive statistics were still unexpected, Miss Ward said.
‘‘We were really surprised that it was so low. But it's fantastic, it's so cool.
‘‘Anecdotally, you hear it all the time, but doing the survey has really kind of validated that it is what's happening.''
The survey asked three questions, the first of which was whether people already had a wheelie-bin.
Twenty-two per cent of respondents did, the remainder used blue bags, burnt rubbish or disposed of it in some other way themselves.
The second question related to the amount of rubbish produced by each household - wheelie-bin holders were asked how many weeks it took to fill their bins, bag-users were asked how many bags they put out for collection each week.
Just over three-quarters of people surveyed produced less than 120 litres of rubbish (the capacity of the proposed wheelie-bins).
‘‘What we found is that 24 per cent of people are producing a lot more rubbish than anyone else and the 76 per cent would be subsidising their fee.
‘‘It's quite different to what the council thought, which is it would work for most people, and what those numbers tell you is that certainly, in the Wanaka basin, it wouldn't.''
Queenstown Lakes District Council solid waste manager Stefan Borowy said the council still planned to carry out its own survey looking into usage levels of garbage bags, recycling bins and private bin collection.
The survey would most likely include Wanaka, rather than just Queenstown as was earlier proposed.
Wanaka Wastebusters has made a submission - based in part on its survey results - on the proposed alternative residual waste service component of the council's 2008-09 draft annual plan.
Wanaka Wastebusters is a not-for-profit organisation that has the council contract for kerbside collection of recycling bins.
