Wellington City Council to scrap recycling bins

Wellington ratepayers will be forced to buy special plastic bags to cover a $1.1 million shortfall in the cost of recycling as the council looks to dispose of its green bins.

The Dominion Post revealed in May that Wellington City Council was planning to dump the 45-litre green bins and was considering wheelie bins instead.

In a report published yesterday, it is now recommending clear recycling bags, which would be sold at supermarkets alongside council rubbish bags. The bags would cost 60 cents each, plus a retail mark-up and gst - costing an average household about $29 a year if the council chose to subsidise the system.

The cost to households would be $58 under a full user-pays system, more than six times the one-off payment of buying the current bins.

One bag would be for paper and cardboard and one would take the other recyclable items.

Council spokesman Richard MacLean said the bins were recyclable and the council would take them back, but "most people would find a use for them". The $10 charge would not be refunded.

Councillor Celia Wade-Brown said charging for the bags could force people to think about limiting the packaged products they bought, and how much they recycled.

"I think people are under the hopeful illusion that recycling pays for itself. It's a bit of wishful thinking at the moment. If we don't do this, we have to find it through rates."

CitiOperations manager Mike Mendonca said it already had levies on landfill users but it was $1.1 million short of covering the $2.6 million cost of the service.

Funding the new bags through increasing the landfill levy could result in people driving their waste to landfills in Porirua or flinging it into the city's reserves, he said.

Hutt City Council considered introducing bags last year but questioned the wisdom of flooding the market with more plastic, environmental sustainability spokeswoman Sandy Beath-Croft said. "We don't agree that's an option."

Porirua City Council chief executive Roger Blakeley said it was committed to its recycling bin service, which was covered by a rates levy of $22 a household.

Ms Wade-Brown said the council was considering providing 20 of the new bags free to all households, enough for the first two months of the scheme, before charges were introduced. The recommendations will be discussed at the council's strategy and policy committee meeting on Thursday, before a round of public consultation.

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