Net ties off concerns about recycling litter

It’s great the Hutt Council have moved forwards with their commitment to reducing litter on the streets and have followed up their trial with support for constituents to BUY THE FLEXINET!!! YAY

Hutt City Council is now selling the Enviro Flexinet’s ($15 for the net to fit the 55 litre green bin, $12 to fit the smaller/older 45 litre bins) from the main admin. building in Laings Rd.

The more people who buy them, the easier it will be for councils to buy Flexinets in bulk, which means the price to the customer should come down.

You know what you need to do!

Read more here

Net profit

Copy of an article that appeared in this week’s Capital Times

A Wellington entrepreneur rubbishes one of the reasons Wellington City Council gives for getting rid of the green recycling bins – to prevent rubbish flying into the streets on windy days.

To eliminate this problem, Amanda Hargreaves and her husband [ed: nearly!] Tai Haronga, have designged a net that fits over the bins to stop the problem.

The Hutt and Dunedin City Councils have already made a small order for the patented net.

“Tai was fed up seeing recyclable material floating in the sea when he was out diving or fishing and decided to do something about it” says Hargreaves.

The stretchy nets, which allow users to fit more into the bins too, would cost an initial $8.

She says replacing the bins with plastic bags, paid for by ratepayers, will simply create more waste.

Celia Wade-Brown, the council’s Environment portfolio leader, says there is overwhelming support from the public to keep the green bins and it is up to the individual if they want to buy a net [ed: or it could be up to the Council to supply them!!]

An e-petition on the council’s website ‘to stop council getting rid of the green bins’ has received more than 7700 supporters [ed: you should see the furore in the facebook groups too!]

“They need to be aware that the nets might slow down collection” says Wade-Brown [ed: rubbish! we've tested and talked with the collectors and it won't]

The council is expected to consult on the future of kerbside recycling in early April.  For more information see www.wellington.govt.nz and www.enviroflexinet.com

You can read our paper here

Our paper on ‘When recycling becomes litter’ received TWO rounds of applause, thanks to its sparkling content delivered wittily and energetically by Tim and Tai.

Read it here:  http://www.wasteminz.org.nz/conference/papers/index.htm
The user name is WasteMINZ and password is WMPapers.

Tim wows the crowd at WasteMinz

WasteMinz success!

Well we’re back and recovered from WasteMinz (who would have thought 400 recyclers, waste collections, council workers and entrepreneurs would dance the night away to Che Fu?!!) and what a great experience it was.

The EnviroFlexiNet was mentioned specifically at the conference dinner, as an example of kiwi ingenuity and excellence, to a capacity crowd.  And our stand was superb, with the litter blowing around catching everyone’s attention.

We have several good leads to follow up now, and a large number of councils looking to make a deal in the coming months.

The most interesting thing for me, was realising the deep personal connections between councils, waste managers, recycling companies and bin manufacturers.  These relationships have been established over a long time, which makes it tricky for newbies like us to penetrate.  Especially when it seems our clients, the councils, are under significant pressure from their suppliers (isn’t that the wrong way round?!) to keep the status quo…

Wellington’s council rethinks recycling..or they could use Enviroflexinets!!

Pretty sad to read in the Dom about Wellington City Council planning “a radical shake-up of its recycling services that could include the end of glass recycling and the phasing out of green bins”.

Their Ops manager said to the Dom green recycling bins could be phased out and replaced with up to three bins per household, for different recyclable materials.

This is because green bins have become too small for families that have embraced recycling, and their design allows the wind to blow rubbish away to litter streets and clog drains.

It is clear that the litter problem is detracting from doing a good thing by recycling.  Seems like consituents of the city think the same thing, judging from their comments:

“… the amount of rubbish “recyling” makes is absurd! Every day after recycling day you see rubbish strewn round the streets from bins being blown round. It is worse for the environment than recycling is! There must be a better solution.”

“In windy wellington its ridiculous how many things you can put out for recycling that ends up in someones garden an hour later. We need recycling bins with lids at least. Something that will hold it in!”

Writing our marketing collateral for us!! thank you very much and sure the council will be knocking on our door shortly…

Putting off the tourists

A bit of a worry to read this NZ Herald article last week, highlighting tourist’s concerns that we kiwis are litter bugs.

The CE of Tourism New Zealand, George Hickton is clearly worried – and so he should be, given tourist dollars amount for about 9% of GDP.

“We know that our international visitors are becoming more environmentally aware and that the 100 per cent pure brand means they come here with a set of expectations about the way we are managing our environment.”Our visitors are looking for ways to recycle their waste while they are out enjoying our country. And they notice the small things like litter.”

ewww do we want our visitors to see this?

Mr Hickton said they were issues all New Zealanders could tackle and help to make a difference.  Looking to the councils to take a lead on this…!

WasteMinz here we come

Welcome to our blog, we hope you enjoy it and look forward to your comments.  If you want to meet us in person, come along to WasteMinz from 5-7 November (well, why not!) and see us on our stand there.

WasteMinz is a non-profit org that promotes sustainable waste management.  That’s exactly what we’re about.  This year promises to be a telling one for waste management – major legislation for our industry, challenges to move down different paths, new participants in the industry – it’s a whole new ball game. 

So we’re off to talk about the EnviroFlexinet trial with Lower Hutt City Council and talk with other authorities about using the product.  Our presentation is on Wednesday.

Over 450 representatives from central and local government, waste management specialists, engineers, planners and politicians, consultants, recyclers, educators and researchers, composters, disposal facility operators and designers, industry, equipment manufacturers and suppliers, waste collection and recycling contractors, environmentalists and community groups will attend.