Council documents said the new rollout will save more than $100,000 by year two.<\/p>\n
Cost was a defining factor, Hauraki District Mayor Toby Adams said, with community misuse and health and safety concerns undermining savings also playing a role.<\/p>\n
Adams described the bins as \u201cnot always reliable\u201d, referring to how they ended up being emptied daily and contributed to the astronomical price tag.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t always work because you\u2019d have a street where there might be five of those bins in one spot and one would them would go off and then they\u2019ll end up changing all five,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n
It got less efficient not just because of the signals but also how council staff were managing it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re up the main street they might as well be changing all of them, not just one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manco Environmental\u2019s product and business developmental manager Logan Black passionately denied any technological failure of the bins.<\/p>\n
He said the reasoning falls to the \u201cissues in their council processes and requirements\u201d as well as alluding to how the council may not have been \u201cfully utilising the software platform … to increase the efficiency of the solution\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added Hauraki is an outlier in terms of the reasoning behind scrapping the bins, referring to how the product is used all over the country and internationally.<\/p>\n
\u201cManco has tried to work with council both on costs and to guide them to actually utilise the system better and to the best of their capability,\u201c he said.<\/p>\n
The Big Belly bins had to be emptied at 50% capacity due to health and safety reasons, increasing labour costs. Photo \/ Hauraki District Council<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has to be done from an internal level or else why are you paying for these units? You may as well have a standard reciprocal that sits on the street that gives you no information [and] no data if you\u2019re not going to do it properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Referring to claims a fully loaded bin could serve as a health and safety risk for a staff member physically lifting rubbish out, Black said Manco had never received an injury-related query, adding the maximum load would weight approximately 20kg.<\/p>\n
\u201cI very much doubt that,\u201d Adams replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say that staff have always discussed that with them and it\u2019s been a conversation piece … you want people that turn up to work and go home in the same condition that they turned up in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Black referred to a statement he had received from the council that highlighted the decision \u201cwas not a reflection on the quality of the Big Belly bins or the service provided by Manco\u201d. Rather, it described how \u201cHauraki\u2019s operating environment meant those efficiencies were not being fully realised\u201d as well as how \u201coperational costs\u201d were major factors<\/p>\n
The statement further explained how the Big Bellies were set to only 50% capacity due to the weight of a full load, eliminating operational benefits.<\/p>\n
Adams acknowledged the reference to community misuse, saying people were \u201cbringing their household rubbish and dumping it there\u201d. He added that a one-reason blame game was not a wise way to view the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about laying blame on any one thing. We looked at the overall aspects; the cost of the bins or whether a sensor went off or not but the overarching activity as a whole found it wasn\u2019t viable. It was a bunch of differing factors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adams and Black credited each other, with the former acknowledging the bin\u2019s potential in other markets and the latter saying he\u2019s \u201cthoroughly enjoyed\u201d their relationship with Hauraki District Council.<\/p>\n
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Council documents said the new rollout will save more than $100,000 by year two. Cost was a defining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[93169,682,23457,8834,20111,104135,138,802,5205,7558,7557,20211,51628,296,300,130,111,139,69,1523,24686,801,3170,193789,131,1361,2201],"class_list":["post-486336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-93169","tag-being","tag-belly","tag-big","tag-bin","tag-bins","tag-business","tag-costs","tag-council","tag-councils","tag-district","tag-dumped","tag-hauraki","tag-into","tag-money","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-ratepayer","tag-rising","tag-scheme","tag-solarpowered","tag-than","tag-that","tag-went"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486336","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=486336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}