Recycling blue for new service
East And Bays Courier
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Taking out the blue recycling crate on rubbish day is proving a hard habit to break.
The city’s new collection service began on Monday, but blue crates still lined the kerbs alongside new 240-litre wheelie bins.
A council spokeswoman says recyclables put out in the old crates won’t be collected.
Instead a sticker is being put on the crates to remind residents to use the new bins.
"Rubbish detectives" have been going ahead of trucks this week to check for contaminants in the bins, and leaving notes for offending residents.
The spokeswoman says fabric and green waste have been found in some bins.
Some recycling has also been put into plastic bags inside the bin, which can’t be processed by the sorting plant.
Detectives will continue to check bins ahead of the collection trucks for six months.
Visy recycling general manager Michael Franks says collection has run smoothly in Auckland and Manukau.
"Already we are seeing that residents are responding positively.
"But if contaminants and plastic bags get into the sorting process they can cause blockages and degrade the quality of recyclable materials collected," he says.
The new facility takes recycling from Auckland and Manukau residents and uses a largely mechanical sorting system to process materials.
Collection details on www.aucklandcity.govt.nz.
