{"id":306003,"date":"2026-02-28T05:17:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T05:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/306003\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T05:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T05:17:20","slug":"increase-in-illegal-rubbish-dumping-costing-whanganui-thousands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/306003\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase in illegal rubbish dumping costing Whanganui thousands"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last half of the 2024\/25 financial year, <\/a>7.94 tonnes of illegally dumped material were sent to landfill.<\/p>\n

\"GlendaGlenda Brown says she is \u201creally perturbed\u201d by the illegal dumping. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n

At the meeting, councillor Julie Herewini said she had twice encountered illegal dumping on the banks of the Whanganui River.<\/p>\n

She asked if there was a council communications strategy on how to report incidents.<\/p>\n

Sula said there was a council workshop with the Whanganui Rural Community Board next month, with a review of the rural bin service, illegal dumping, \u201cand all the other things that go with it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are proactive in following up on any suspected illegal behaviour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Councillor Glenda Brown was \u201creally perturbed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not good enough,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us are working really hard to keep this a clean community, and doing what we need to do to help the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Andrew Tripe said the community members needed to report people.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take a quick photo of their car when you see them doing it. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt costs the ratepayers to clean up the waste<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sad reality is that there are people illegally dumping, and they are probably people who don\u2019t really care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sula said the council was trying to manage the clean-up of illegal dumping through its litter team.<\/p>\n

If a contractor was required, costs ranged from $800 to $1500 each time, depending on size.<\/p>\n

Council waste manager Morgan Harrison told the Chronicle last year that the litter team was one of only a handful in the country, and cost ratepayers about $180,000 a year to operate.<\/p>\n

An infringement for illegal rubbish dumping is $400, the maximum the council can charge under the 1979 Litter Act.<\/p>\n

Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the last half of the 2024\/25 financial year, 7.94 tonnes of illegally dumped material were sent to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[9092,5837,54760,7558,7557,6097,31533,273,16484,78,5345,111,139,69,38019,147,44439,2742,1883],"class_list":{"0":"post-306003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-against","9":"tag-battle","10":"tag-costing","11":"tag-councils","12":"tag-district","13":"tag-down","14":"tag-dumping","15":"tag-environment","16":"tag-illegal","17":"tag-in","18":"tag-increase","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-rubbish","23":"tag-science","24":"tag-slowing","25":"tag-thousands","26":"tag-whanganui"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306003","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=306003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}