More than 100 tonnes of Central Otago recycling from residents' yellow bins that was stockpiled in Cromwell has been trucked out of the district.
But another 60 tonnes of plastic, tin, paper and cardboard is still in storage and waiting to be recycled, Central Otago district councillors have been told.
All the 100 tonnes of stockpiled material had been recycled, and reports circulating that the material had been taken to landfill were incorrect, council infrastructure services executive manager Julie Muir said at Wednesday's waste and property committee meeting.
Over the past 12 months less than 1% of all items put into yellow recycling bins had gone into landfill, and those items were contaminated or degraded, Ms Muir said.
The Central Otago council used to send all of its yellow bin recycling to the Frankton facility used by the Queenstown Lakes District Council, but the facility had been unable to accept Central Otago material for parts of this year because of a backlog of material, Ms Muir said.
The Central Otago material had therefore been stockpiled at the Cromwell transfer centre, before being taken to other processing facilities.
Between July 1 and September 20 this year 53 tonnes of recycling had been taken to Invercargill for processing and 16 tonnes to Timaru, and 52 had been accepted by the Frankton facility.
But another 60 tonnes was still stockpiled in Cromwell, awaiting processing, Ms Muir said.
She said it cost more to take the material out of Otago than to Frankton - the cost per tonne to take materials to Frankton, Timaru and Invercargill was $40, $179 and $304 per tonne respectively.
Councillors approved an overspend of $62,000 for material processed in Timaru and Invercargill until September 30 this year.
They also approved overspends if necessary of $31,000 for increased costs of processing material at the Frankton facility from October this year to June next year, and of $185,000 for recycling that would be sent to Timaru or Invercargill during that period if it could not be processed in Frankton.
If there were weeks that no facilities were available, then material would have to go landfill, a report from Ms Muir said.
But staff were continuing to investigate options for a recycling facility in Central Otago, and would report back to councillors later this year about possibilities.
Residents should also be assessing their behaviour, and hopefully note the financial costs of recycling, and realise the best thing to do was to "reduce and reuse", Central Otago Mayor Tim Cadogan said.
