About 20% of the recycling waste collected in Southland is being diverted to landfills due to contamination, the council says.
Invercargill city councillors received a report last week at the council’s infrastructure committee which stated the cumulative waste for the first three months of this financial year was 2.56% or 142 tonnes above what went to landfill at the same time last year.
At the time, council infrastructure manager Erin Moogan said there was a significant amount of contaminated recycling — more than 20% — needing to be diverted to landfill due to contamination.
The Otago Daily Times approached the council to have a better understanding of the situation.
While there was a decreasing trend on contaminated recycling waste compared with last year, there was still a huge volume of recycling needing to be disposed of in landfill.
Ms Moogan said the Invercargill City Council, which is a member of the three WasteNet councils, recycled about 4800 tonnes of materials last year,
During the 2020-21 financial year, 672 tonnes of contaminated recycling was diverted to the landfill, she said.
"There was a 9.4% reduction (or 70 tonnes) from the 2019-20 financial year, and a 9.5% reduction on the previous five-year average ...
"Currently, 20.3% of the total recycling collected is contaminated and needs to be disposed of in the landfill."
She refused to say how much this was costing the council, saying the information was "of a commercially sensitive nature".
Soiled nappies, organic waste, and even animal remains were among items being disposed of in the yellow recycling bin and contaminating the rest of the contents.
Due to this situation, Mrs Moogan said the council was reviewing the education and communication strategy and were even contemplating implementing a bylaw to incentivise non-compliant residents to minimise contamination.
"We are also reviewing options to audit bin contents to encourage changes in behaviour through compliance enforcements for repeat offenders."
She urged the community to help the council in the matter and be mindful in paying attention to the information attached to the underside of the bin lids to ensure which materials could be or not recycled.
"Ideally, reduced waste is best but we understand that waste, to some degree, is inevitable ... We are passionate about minimising waste and materials to landfill but we can only do it with the help of the communities we serve."
During the meeting last week, councillors also discussed a problem with glass bottles breaking as they are loaded into the rubbish truck which contaminated the recycling.
Ms Moogan said at this stage there was not a case to ask the community not to dispose of the glass in the yellow bin as there was no better solution.
However, the council would have a look and understand from a local and national point of view if it should implement a four-bins system, which would result in glass and food waste being placed in separate bins.
