RFID technology could help Hutt City Council cut down on the more than $1 million a year that contamination of the yellow-lid recycling bins is costing ratepayers.

HCC wants to help people who don’t understand what can be recycled, and to intervene if the reason for contamination is because a landlord refuses to order a big enough red-lid rubbish bin for a tenant.

But if the reason for putting the likes of food, takeaway cups, polystyrene, dirty nappies, old clothing and soft plastics in the recycling bin is essentially because the person/household couldn’t give a stuff that they’re costing fellow ratepayers, we’ll take away the yellow bin.  But the serial offender will continue to pay for the service regardless.

Recycling is all about better use of resources and diverting waste from filling up Silverstream landfill. 

When a load of recyclables collected kerbside has more than 10% of material that isn’t paper, cardboard, aluminium, tin cans and plastics number 1, 2, and 5, it’s considered contaminated – and goes to the dump anyway.  (Glass is recycled separately in the blue bins, of course.)

What’s more, Waste Management charges the council a penalty to cover the landfill fee. 

Average annual contamination rates in the Hutt have been:  17.9% (in 2021/22), 15.5% (2022/23) and 14.6% (2023/24).

So they’re coming down – but while there continues to be contamination, penalty fees that come out of your rates money still range from $13,500 to $30,000 a month.

Put on top of that the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on campaigns trying to educate  people about what can be put in the recycling bins, and the four ‘bin ambassadors’ that rove the streets inspecting recycling bin contents to head off contamination penalties, then the overall cost to ratepayers was $1.05m last financial year.

We have taken action against households that continue to put the wrong things in the recycling bins after three warnings (orange and red stickers on bins).  Since the new rubbish/recycling scheme began in late 2022, we’ve taken away 390 recycling bins.  (People can apply to re-join recycling collection after six months.)

The Hutt is not unusual in recycling contamination rates.  We’re at 14.6% contamination – Auckland is at 25%, Rotorua Lakes 23%, Porirua 21%.  But Christchurch achieves 9.9% and Selwyn District 3%.

At a councillor briefing and at the Climate Change Committee meeting this month, a series of options for how to cut contamination and the cost to ratepayers were debated.

One option to be investigated is council intervening in landlord-tenant relationships when we find out tenants end up putting rubbish in the recycling bin because their landlord has ordered a too-small red-lid rubbish bin (80-litre or even 120-litre for a large family).  We’re checking on the legality of council compulsorily replacing a small rubbish bin with a larger one. 

Landlords recoup rates costs through rent and councillors agree that an appropriate-sized rubbish bin is a fundamental tenant right (in the same way as working smoke alarms, adequate locks, insulation, etc).  HCC intends advocating to central government about this.

While the bin ambassadors have been a good way to cut back contamination, and meet with households to find out the reasons why the wrong things are going into recycling bins, technology may offer another/better solution.

The rubbish and recycling bins used in Hutt City are tagged with RFID (radio frequency identification), so that we know whose bin belongs to which property.

Collection trucks are also equipped with cameras, monitoring what material from a bin is going into the hopper.

An option being investigated is to ‘flag’, using RFID, a property that previously has put out a ‘contaminated’ recycling bin.  When the collection truck pulls up to such properties the next time, the driver will check whether there are incorrect items in the bin.   If there is, the bin and contents will be left, along with a message to the household to contact the council.

We then have a starting point to find out why wrong items are being put out for recycling – perhaps it’s helping people understand what can and can’t be recycled, talking to the landlord, etc. 

Ultimately, this should stop penalty fees, increase recycling rates, and reduce spending on education campaigns (though there will always be a need for some level of that).

• If you want to find out what can and can’t be recycled, or indeed anything about Hutt City’s rubbish and recycling – go to https://www.toogoodtowaste.co.nz/

There will be high interest in Hutt City Council’s draft Parking Strategy when it’s released in September.

There are plenty of challenges. We know we’ll lose around 700 carparks in the central city with Riverlink’s floodway improvements. Some suburban streets are choked with parked vehicles because – with the blessing of central Government legislation – developers of many of the new townhouses springing up everywhere have provided insufficient, or no, off-street parking.

Decades of policy and habit have turned us into a car-centric society. But 98% of the national fleet burns fossil fuels, and greenhouse gas emission reduction imperatives grow ever-more urgent – if for nothing else because we’ll have to buy billions of dollars’ of overseas carbon credits if we fail to meet our international climate change commitments.

More people are using public transport but there are big gaps in services. Mentioning cycleways triggers extreme reactions from a disappointingly high number of people.

Electric vehicles will be a big part of the solution in the future, as will shared vehicle schemes like MEVO. Parking arrangements – on and off-street – will have to accommodate this.

Councillors, reluctantly, agreed to an increase in paid parking fees, 9am-5pm 7-days, and from October to meter 300 parking spaces on Jackson St and the Peel St carpark (with some free spaces for library users in the latter).

That’s gone down like a cup of cold sick with families and businesses struggling with the cost of living crisis, but the alternative was another 1% on the already-too-high rates increase. The principle that car users (not every ratepayer/renter drives) should pay a share of the tens of millions of dollars of council’s annual transport operating and capital costs through parking fees weighed in.

There will be consultation on the wider parking strategy. It will look at everything from whether we should have ‘residents’ only’ parking like Wellington; business and delivery needs; how to better cater for those with mobility issues, even graduated/demand-responsive parking pricing.

There are reasons why the Government brought in rules blocking councils’ ability to require new housing developments to have off-street parking. It reduces housing costs and helps with transport mode shift. But in the Hutt, it has left ratepayers with a huge bill.

Biddle and Milne Cres., Johnston and Marina Gr., and more than 90 other streets need kerb and channel changes and other traffic management interventions to deal with parking, and rubbish truck and emergency vehicle access. The cost is $39m over the next decade, and there may not be an NZTA subsidy.

The new Government has not changed Labour’s rules on off-street parking, ostensibly buying into the mode-shift argument. Yet their new policy on transport prioritises building new roads.

Many residents consider the public road parking space outside their house is ‘theirs’, even when they have garages and driveways. But if we’re to have better/more buses, and to make it safer to cycle for kids and others, we may need that road space – at least on one side of the road.

Lots to think about.