{"id":380439,"date":"2026-04-15T09:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T09:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/380439\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T09:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T09:41:09","slug":"red-warnings-issued-to-hundreds-of-recycling-rule-breakers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/380439\/","title":{"rendered":"Red warnings issued to hundreds of recycling rule breakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ODT.<\/p>\n

\nA three-strikes system means people who repeatedly fail inspections risk having their recycling bin suspended. (File photo).
\nPhoto: ODT\n<\/p>\n

The clean recycling message has been slow to kick in for some Southland residents, more than one year after bin inspections began in the region<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In March last year, WasteNet rolled out a three-strike system which meant offenders who received three red tags for significant contamination lost their bin.<\/p>\n

Since the programme’s inception, 20 properties had hit that threshold and only five had applied for reinstation.<\/p>\n

A recent report from WasteNet director Fiona Walker showed there was still room for improvement, even though contamination had dipped.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

“Data collected to-date reinforces the need to have a programme which is based on both education … and enforcement, noting that some residents are not motivated by education alone as demonstrated by repeat red tags being received in a relatively short time period,” Walker wrote.<\/p>\n

The report showed that from the start of the year to 29 March, 10,656 bin inspections had been completed across the three council areas with a compliance rate of 88 percent.<\/p>\n

Five percent of inspections (488 total) had resulted in an orange tag, while seven percent (782 total) lead to a red tag.<\/p>\n

The most common form of contamination seen during monitoring was soft plastics followed by organic waste and general refuse or dirty items.<\/p>\n

There was some good news, with the report showing the contamination rate had dropped from 17 percent to 13 percent when comparing 2023\/24 with the current financial year-to-date.<\/p>\n

That meant the amount of contamination sent to landfill from recycling<\/a> was down by 18 tonnes a month.<\/p>\n

For the 2023\/24 year, 944 tonnes of waste was redirected to landfill from recycling at a cost of $339,604, based on transfer station fees at that time.<\/p>\n

WasteNet is a shared waste service for Southland District Council, Invercargill City Council and Gore District Council.<\/p>\n

Changes are in the pipeline which would allow bins to be confiscated if contamination was recorded three times across two years, instead of over a one year period.<\/p>\n

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A three-strikes system means people who repeatedly fail inspections risk having their recycling bin suspended. (File photo). Photo:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-380439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380439","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=380439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}