Why the DCC is Lame – Part 2

Recycling.

A few years ago every house in Dunedin was issued with a 45 litre recycling bin. These bins are owned by the property. Don’t waste your time arguing with a council staffer about how a property can’t own something. Been there, done that.

If your bin is lost, stolen or broken or there isn’t one when you move into your flat, you can purchase a replacement one for $9. That’s right, the owner of the property doesn’t own the bin, but is responsible for replacing it. Cos you know, like, houses can’t, like, buy shit.

Let’s face it though, a 45 litre bin isn’t big enough for most students. By the time you fit 5-dozen beer bottles in there, there isn’t much room for anything else. The council does have bigger bins available for houses of 5 occupants or more, but you have to apply for these in writing. Hard out. Bureaucrats. Final nail in the council coffin is recycling is not available in all areas of Dunedin.

So why does this make the council so stupid? Because they have a goal of zero waste to landfill by 2015. If they continue with their Nazi recycling regulations, that goal seems really unlikely. If it’s recyclable and in some kind of container, then I say the Council should take it.

Next week I’m hitting the streets to photograph exactly how the recycling scheme is failing in Dunedin. You’ll be able to check those out here and on Flickr.

Why the Dunedin City Council is Lame – Part 1

Let me just quote their website regarding the insanely expensive rubbish bags:

“Why do we not use biodegradable bags?

The choice of materials was carefully considered, as the bags have to meet the New Zealand standard for containment of domestic rubbish.

We worked out that paper rubbish bags are about nine times the volume of the equivalent plastic ones. This means we would send an estimated 706 tonnes of paper bags to landfill, as opposed to 34 tonnes of plastic bags.

Paper bags were also a lot more expensive for us to buy. This is a cost that would be passed onto the user (you). (Ok cool sounds almost like you care)

When we advertised for manufacturers and suppliers of rubbish bags, no company submitted a tender based on biodegradable bags. This meant we were unable to look at them as an option.”

. . . Two words. . . Lame excuse. You wrote the frickin tender, you could have specified biodegradable bags. So basically this page is political spin. I do agree about paper bags, they’re a pain in the bum and they get wet and stuff. The cost thing, yeah ok, except here’s an idea, since only a small % of the cost of the bag is the disposal cost and the rest is the cost of the actual bag, why didn’t you just print stickers that cost 50 cents each and we could stick them on our own bags? Then we could buy our own biodegradable bags? Oh right… I remember now, its cos you wanted the pavements to look all pretty. . .It’s garbage guys, it’s never pretty.