Waiheke Waste and Recycle - a fight we should not loose!

When it comes to the topic of the environment, sustainability and “green” issues in general, for many the most palpable connection to all this will be the green recycle bin at the back door. That’s where personal “environmentally friendly practices” began some twenty or so years ago. Now we are all seemingly used to the fact that some items in our waste have a value and can and should be put to some form of further use rather than ending up in landfills. It has taken a long time for this to sink into the common consciousness and the Green Movement is to be thanked for it.

On Waiheke Island, our neighbour in the Hauraki Gulf, the locals went quite a bit further than that. They developed their own island based recycling operation run by the locally owned and operated “Clean Stream” company and supported by the local community board and government. This operation was highly successful. With 25 employees the company collected and hand sorted the recycled materials to such a high standard that they found buyers for all their recycled materials even in this recession. They run their diesel rubbish trucks on bio-diesel made from locally recycled fish and chips oils and their green waste is locally shredded, composted and then made available as high quality compost to local gardens and farms and often for free. Their recycled materials are in fact so clean that the glass, plastic and paper bails are shipped out from the island in the same supermarket supply vans that bring the supermarket products to the island in order to save on fuel and ferry cost. All in all their operation fulfils all the legal requirements and objectives especially set out by the Auckland Council in minimizing rubbish and dealing whenever possible with it on the Gulf Islands themselves. On top of that, in cooperation with the University of Auckland “Clean Stream” developed an ingenious new strong, durable and versatile composite building material made from shredded and reconstituted plastic, wood and other fibres from the rubbish that is then extruded into fence posts, garden borders and many other items. This was so successful that there in fact might not have been enough such rubbish on the island to meet the demand for the product.

But all this is no more!

Why? In a decision that nobody in their right mind can understand the Auckland City Council, having jurisdiction over Waiheke, handed the entire rubbish and recycling contract for the island over to a large multi-national corporation that already has the contract for the rest of Auckland without proper consultation with the people on the island and against their own stated principles and laws. For many observers this appeared to be a pre-ordained and rigged-up process smelling of back hand dealings and big business bullying tactics. Rubbish is a multi billion dollar international business and when the big bucks of international business moguls and their lobbyist henchmen meet with government officials the outcome is often paradoxical to say the least – go figure why! And while pro-forma the new international company Transpacific Industries (TPI) promised to do the waste removal job a tad cheaper than “Clean Stream”, it certainly won’t do a good job at recycling: The recycleable waste that this company has collected in the rest of Auckland and now from Waiheke is of such a low quality – it is not properly sorted, with paper and plastic contaminated with glass and other rubbish – that it can not find buyers on the market locally and has to ship some of the stuff as low grade waste to China. The rest piles up in an unbelievably huge trash mountain dubbed “Mount Visy” – you must see this in order to believe it! – in South Auckland and will likely become a liability for all involved for a long time to come.

Above: Trash mountain of what Aucklanders believed was their recycled waste, thanks to TPI and the Auckland City Council, Waihekes recycled material will end there too....

Above: How it was done by Clean Stream in Waiheke. Clean sorted materials ready to sell for true recycling use.

Due to the recession the ability of TPI to ship this low grade stuff to China as planned has vanished, possibly for a long time. And when shipped to China much of this, especially the plastic, might have ended up in dirty furnaces as a cheap dirty oil substitute. TPI’s parent company was forced into receivership lately already as this once lucrative trade has dried up. Observers can see where this is heading: TPI is stuffing profits down their pockets with the willing help of a few Auckland City Councillors while piling up a huge liability somewhere in the backyards of the community which eventually will end up to be a liability once more to the ratepayers, should TPI follow its parent company into receivership. In the meanwhile “fat cat” consultants and industry-government advisors who stitched these dubious deals together with the ACC councillors will walk away with the customary bulge in their wallet.

The damage that the actions of the Auckland City Councillors have done to their Waiheke constituents and to the prospect to export this model recycling scheme to other regions in the country is enormous. The locally operated “Clean Stream” business added over $1.3 Million to the local island economy annually while providing jobs for 25 people and conducting their operation in an exemplary fashion. I would encourage you to see all this for yourself at: www.waihekedoesitbetter.org.nz , a website set up by an action group that is fighting for the survival of this successful local refuse and recycle operation.

If you feel like supporting our friends in Waiheke, please visit the website above which gives you some ideas of where to write to and what you can do.

It is my belief that locally owned, operated and managed waste recycling operations like that on Waiheke are best suited to match local needs and local opportunities with the task of waste reduction and successful recycling. To that extend I believe that perhaps your community too should undertake a review of the way your refuse operations are handled and where your refuse and recycling materials actually end up. It would not surprise me at all if you would find out that your supposedly recycled materials end up in the same unsustainable manner generating profits for some large enterprise while piling up somewhere and failing to deliver what recycling is all about to the environment and our communities.

Thomas Everth