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A public meeting to discuss the Mahurangi Wastebusters service will be held at the Warkworth Town Hall on Wednesday, February 12, starting at 7.30pm.
Mahurangi Wastebusters has been operating the refuse and recycling centres at Lawrie Road, Snells Beach, and Rustybrook Road, Wellsford, since last July, introducing a new community recycling model.
General manager Matthew Luxon says the meeting will be an opportunity to share how things have been going, answer any questions and get feedback.
He says Christmas and New Year produced the busiest days so far.
“It was frantic,” he says. “We had a 400 per cent increase in cardboard and glass bottles so people obviously enjoyed their festivities.”
Matthew acknowledges there have been start-up challenges including the collapse of international recycling markets, which led to the introduction of a small fee for recycling cardboard, paper, plastics 1 and 2, cans, glass bottles and jars.
At Lawrie Road, there has also been the transition from charging by weight to charging by volume.
“At Rustybrook Road, waste has always been charged by volume and it is the norm for community-based operations, but volume-based pricing was a big change for Lawrie Road customers,” Matthew says.
“We have been closely monitoring our pricing since changing over and although we’ve had some customers with large, light loads suggest prices are too high, customers with large, heavy loads are happy.”
Prices for smaller loads such as bags, car boot and station wagons, are unchanged, while scrap metal and whiteware appliances are free to dispose of.
“With the focus on recycling as much as possible, charging by volume makes it easier to identify different materials and apply different prices, which are based on actual costs.
“We couldn’t run an efficient operation and recycle as much as we do using weight – customers would be forever driving over the weighbridge each time they unloaded a particular material – it just wouldn’t work.”
Wastebusters currently has 22 ‘product lines’ that they send for recycling to ethical and sustainable processing plants in Auckland and Whangarei including timber, e-waste, polystyrene, fluorescent bulbs and tubes, car and truck batteries, and tyres.
Profits are re-invested into reducing the amount of waste going to landfill.
This includes new education activities and events, which community engagement coordinator Trish Allen will launch next month.
“We’ve established our up-cycled learning hub at Lawrie Road with its own worm farm, with Rosie Hutchinson as our education officer,” Trish says. “Initially our focus will be on teaching kids how to reduce and recycle waste. Once we have sorted health and safety requirements and finalised the programme, we will be taking bookings from early education centres and schools.”
Info: mahurangiwastebusters.nz
