Taking to the streets of Christchurch, there’s a new rubbish truck doing the rounds, going places no rubbish truck has gone before.
Jason Segal, a driver and operator trainer for the truck owners, Waste Management NZ, says the truck is ideally suited to go places the larger trucks can’t enter.
"We’ll utilise these in areas such as rest homes with narrow pathways. The hillier parts of Cashmere are a prime example of where we have a lot of private lanes, a lot of areas that we can’t get larger vehicles, especially those steep narrow streets."
The low-emission diesel truck is the first in Waste Management's Christchurch fleet to have two separate chambers.
That means workers can separately collect rubbish, recycling or organics at the same time, without the issue of cross-contamination.
To ensure contamination isn’t an ongoing issue, Segal says the trucks are cleaned at the end of each day, and washed out before a different waste stream is introduced.
- John Spurdle, Public Interest Journalism Fund
