Envision New Zealand's ''Bottom of the South Resource Recovery Study Tour'' finished a six-stop tour of Otago resource recovery centres - in Queenstown, Wanaka, Alexandra, Oamaru, Hampden and Dunedin - in Dunedin yesterday.
At the Waitaki Resource Recovery Park in Oamaru on Tuesday, tour leader Therese Mangos said the tour would strengthen ties between the 70-member Community Recycling Network across the country, but the group of about 15 people from around New Zealand were curious about trends at recovery parks.
''These places are not static, they evolve,'' she said.
Waitaki Resource Recovery Trust manager Dave Clare said when the trust began in 2003, the Oamaru park employed two part-time staff and operated two days a week, but it now had 23 staff and operated seven days a week and with 75,000 ''vehicle movements'' a year there, it was capitalising on its central location in Oamaru.
The park also received material from Palmerston, Hampden, Omarama, Otematata and Pukeuri, plastics from Ashburton, and material from the Oceania dairy factory in South Canterbury.
Envision New Zealand's Rick Thorpe, of Raglan's Xtreme Zero Waste, said the tour would inform ''best practice'' in health and safety, equipment, and layout.
In Oamaru, the planned redevelopment of the park hit a funding snag before the October election when the Waitaki District Council required the trust to address noise issues from its glass recycling operation before it signed off on $285,000 for the redevelopment to address health and safety issues and change the layout of the park to give its onsite shop, Get Sorted, more prominence.
