About 20% of the rubbish left at the gate is stickered (paid for), with people thinking the crates at the gate are an after-hours service.<\/p>\n
Putting stickered rubbish bags outside the station when people miss their kerbside collection was still an extra cost to the council, Nickerson said.<\/p>\n
The 1200 tonnes of rubbish dumped this year have cost the council $610,000, which includes disposal and contractor costs.<\/p>\n
It excluded internal staff time for management, customer service, compliance or parks and recreation services, he said.<\/p>\n
Gisborne has seen a 54.8% increase in illegal rubbish dumping in the last year, with 775 tonnes dumped between 2023 and 2024 (October).<\/p>\n
Figures show the volume of waste dumped increased from just over 150 tonnes at the end of 2021 to almost 350 tonnes by the end of 2023.<\/p>\n
Kate Sykes, council team leader monitoring and compliance, said over the year to date there had been 43 complaints of burning rubbish, which included rubbish, plastic and toxic materials.<\/p>\n
Eight additional complaints were related to the burning of green waste\/tree prunings.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally, people are burning green waste (which is permitted provided it is dry and that the fire season does not prohibit the use of incinerators or open burning). <\/p>\n
\u201cOther items commonly include plastic, rubber, [and] metal, which are not permitted to be burnt as they produce toxic components that can be harmful to health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sykes said the number of complaints had been consistently between 50-60 complaints per year over the last three years. <\/p>\n
The motive behind people burning rubbish was \u201ca complicated matrix\u201d of reasons, which included the cost-of-living-crisis, cost of disposal as waste levies were set by the Government, barriers to making rubbish disposal easy (landlords not passing on rubbish stickers, lack of transport for larger items, working shift hours, etc), and ingrained \u201cpoor behaviour and\/or ignorance\u201d.<\/p>\n
For those non-compliant, the council used a graduated response to non-compliance, she said.<\/p>\n
This might start with education (a pamphlet about what can\/can\u2019t be burnt) or a formal warning, and worked through a range of options that may extend up to and include court action, Sykes said. <\/p>\n
This would be for those \u201cserious or persistent offenders or where there is a high risk of harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where to go if you want to learn about reducing your waste?<\/p>\n
Tair\u0101whiti Environment Centre offers recycling services, waste minimisation advice, a community garden and compost, a trap library and educational initiatives.<\/p>\n
The centre\u2019s Zero Waste activator, Jo McKay, said it was interesting that 94% of the cost the council incurs for illegal dumping happened outside the transfer station.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows people are trying to get it to the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n
December was a great time of year to reflect on waste and consumer habits, with Christmas approaching, McKay said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really good time of year to think carefully about what you\u2019re buying as gifts, and reflect on whether we really need it in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
When purchasing, people could ask themselves whether there was another, more sustainable alternative, McKay said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan something be repurposed, remade, handmade, upcycled … the best things in life are free anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really getting people to think about the end of life of that product and what happens to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why not buy someone \u201ca beautiful keep cup, for instance?\u201d.<\/p>\n
Single-use cups were often full of microplastics, used only once and then become waste, she said.<\/p>\n
While the centre offered a recycling service for items the council did not collect for kerbside collection, McKay said recycling should be one of the last solutions to aspire towards. <\/p>\n
Reducing consumption was the first.<\/p>\n
McKay encouraged sharing to reduce waste.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a frock swap here. That\u2019s a free rack for people to bring in the dresses that they don\u2019t like wearing anymore, and then other people can take them home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tair\u0101whiti Environment Centre also wanted to see \u201cstrong product stewardship legislation\u201d requiring companies to take responsibility for their products and think about end-of-life solutions.<\/p>\n
The centre also accepts old laptops, computers and hard drives, and the room where the e-waste is kept is \u201cchocker\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cE-waste (technology) is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world,\u201d McKay said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a really wonderful volunteer who comes in and fixes what he can to be redistributed into the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone not sure of how to dispose of an item can contact the Environment Centre for ideas on where to take it, McKay said.<\/p>\n
The centre also offers a workshop series to help people grow skills in reducing waste, which includes workshops on repairing and composting. <\/p>\n
This article has been updated to include a council response: The council said they were currently working on a solution to the problem and would give an update soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 20% of the rubbish left at the gate is stickered (paid for), with people thinking the crates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[52173,19333,1443,82007,95,1975,682,6799,20211,31533,273,23373,110654,12506,2959,16484,302,39084,11692,111,139,69,4517,5351,20488,38019,147,21938,6432,33442,18216,379],"class_list":["post-181267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-52173","tag-19333","tag-about","tag-alltime","tag-and","tag-at","tag-being","tag-cars","tag-dumped","tag-dumping","tag-environment","tag-equivalent","tag-flytipping","tag-gisborne","tag-high","tag-illegal","tag-its","tag-location","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-past","tag-previous","tag-reached","tag-rubbish","tag-science","tag-surges","tag-surprising","tag-tonnes","tag-weight","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}