Media Release

13 September 2016

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Delivery of 25,000 sets of wheelie bins and crates starts this week

Rotorua Lakes Council staff member checks out the warehouse full of wheelie bins that are due to be delivered to Rotorua properties.

Delivery of wheelie bins for Rotorua’s new kerbside rubbish and recycling service begins this week.

The new service starts on the last day of October so residents need to keep using their paper rubbish bags until then.

Two bins – one for rubbish and a larger bin for recycling – plus a crate for glass will be delivered to residential properties in the city. The bins and crate may not be delivered at once.

A red-lidded bin which is about the size of two paper rubbish bags will be for general rubbish and will be collected every week.

A larger, yellow-lidded bin and a crate for glass will be for recycling materials and will be collected fortnightly so every second week residents will put out their rubbish bin plus their recycling wheelie bin and glass crate. People will be encouraged to “wash and squash” recyclables to fit more into their bin and will also still be able to use the city recycling centre.

Services in lakes and rural communities will be different and have been worked through with residents there. These services will be a mix of bins and bags and/or transfer station facilities.

Rotorua Lake Council’s transport and waste solutions director, Stavros Michael, says about 25,000 sets of bins and crates will be delivered to properties in the city.

“It would be impractical and unsafe for us to congest the streets with hundreds of bins. We are delivering bins on one side of the street at a time and will return later to deliver bins for the other side. We want to reassure people that if they see their neighbour across the road has received their bins, there’s no need to worry – theirs will be coming on a different day,” Mr Michael says.

An information booklet which includes collection days and other details will be delivered with the bins.

The bins will be tagged to properties which will help the council collect data that will help with any future planning and review of services.

Why have things changed?

Mr Michael says the Council decided to introduce the new service as part of a review of the district waste strategy and with the current fleet of rubbish trucks due for replacement, it was considered a good time to review services and consider a more efficient, modern service.

There are a number of things council aims to achieve by introducing the new service:

• Increase the amount of recycling by making it easy to sort your waste and meet community demand for kerbside recycling. An immediate, significant increase in recycling is expected.
• Reduce the amount of rubbish going to landfill and associated environmental risks.
• Reduce the cost of services – this new service will provide an initial annual saving of approximately $500,000 compared with the current council-run service. Rotorua is one of the few districts still using paper bags so the cost of buying those has increased.
• Reduce health and safety risks and injury rates associated with the current, largely manual collection service.

Find out all about the new service at rotorualakescouncil.nz/rubbish

Call 0800 020001 if you have any further questions or if you haven’t received your bins and crate by 30 October.

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