Centre will help minimise waste

OPINION: Palmerston North City Council is taking out the trash.

The council has set a goal to divert 75 per cent of the city's waste away from landfills by 2015. To that end, it proposes spending $6 million over the next two years providing kerbside recycling wheelie bins to every household in the city.

The 75 per cent target is laudable but if the council is serious about meeting it, it must put funding for a resource recovery back into its draft long-term plan.

Funding for a resource recovery centre, recycling things such as bikes, furniture and computers, was cut from the draft plan by councillors in February. The project would have cost ratepayers about $1.2 million a significant sum of money, but necessary if the council is to achieve its goal.

The wheelie bin initiative is well overdue. While the cost of providing them equates to about $40 per ratepayer each year, the plan is likely to be well-received by residents tired of the hassle of putting their recycling out in plastic bags, only to see it blown away and scattered down the street and creating more waste, not less.

Waste management is a core function of council, and a city of Palmerston North's size should have had a more sophisticated kerbside recycling system years ago.

It's an issue the city council has dithered on for too long. Wheelie bins are expensive and allocating funding for them in the current climate of large council debt and an intensifying recession is difficult politically.

But it is a necessary expense, and one that is not difficult to justify financially as well as environmentally. If, as expected, the introduction of the bins sees the amount of recycling double, significant strides towards reaching the 75 per cent goal will have been made. But it's only a part of the problem.

Keeping three quarters of the city's waste out of landfills is only realistic if the council takes a multi-pronged approach to its waste minimisation strategy.

If it's in for a penny, it must be in for a pound. It is not a problem that can be solved with half measures; it should either be addressed comprehensively or not at all. We have to acknowledged the cost of an effective waste management programme is high, but the benefits to the city, its residents and the environment they live in are even higher.

One more thing: Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the situation in Fiji has deteriorated alarming in the past few days. Judges have been sacked, the nation's constitution has been torn up, and soldiers are occupying news rooms and censoring reports critical of the "government".

As a journalist, there's no more distressing sight than the systematic oppression of a free and independent press. But everyone should be deeply worried by the overt attacks on the media in Fiji, not just journalists. When voices of dissent are silenced and the veil of secrecy completely envelopes the island nation, fertile ground will have been laid for tyranny to thrive and injustice to flourish.

- © Fairfax NZ News