Kerbside consultation kicks off
Published on 29 March 2022
Kerbside food waste collection would cost households in the collection areas $1.17 a week from mid-2024
Consultation has now opened for Whanganui District Council’s annual plan and long-term plan amendment and the council would like to hear community feedback.
The annual plan sets out how council services and facilities are funded for the year.
The council’s chief financial officer, Mike Fermor, says, “Even with inflation at almost 6% we’ve managed to keep this year’s rates increase to 3.9%.
“This is one of the lowest rates increases in the region and it fits with what we indicated last year.”
This year the council is required to consult the community on amending its Long-Term Plan 2021-31 to include kerbside recycling and food waste collections.
Whanganui district councillors voted to bring in kerbside recycling and food waste collections in late 2021, after considering community feedback and climate change imperatives.
Councillor Alan Taylor, who chairs the council’s Infrastructure, Climate Change and Emergency committee says Whanganui is one of only a few councils without kerbside recycling and the council’s Waste Plan estimates that Whanganui could boost what it’s recycling by an extra 800 tonnes a year with a kerbside collection.
Kerbside recycling would start in mid-2023 and take plastics 1, 2 and 5 as well as glass bottles and jars, aluminium and steel cans and paper and card. Kerbside food waste collection would start in mid-2024.
“Keeping food scraps out of rubbish bins seems like a small thing, but in terms of climate change it’s a really important action to take. That’s because food scraps rot without oxygen at the landfill, and this process produces greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change.
“Whanganui’s getting ahead on this because central government is likely to expect all councils to provide a kerbside food waste collection in future.
“We know some people already compost raw food scraps at home – I’m pleased to say the kerbside service would be useful for them as well. As it’s a commercial collection, it would take things that can’t go into a home compost, like cooked food, dairy, meat, fish and some compostable packaging.”
Mike Fermor says the council looked at how the collections would work best in Whanganui, with a focus on keeping the cost to ratepayers as low as possible and diverting as much as possible from landfill.
He says the most cost-effective approach is to provide kerbside recycling and food waste collections to the Whanganui city urban area and Fordell, Marybank and Mowhanau villages.
“We think it’s fair that only households with access to kerbside recycling and food waste collections pay for the services.
“To make the numbers work, we need to have an ‘all in’ approach, where all households in the kerbside recycling and food waste collection areas pay for the services regardless of whether they use them or not.”
Cost estimates are now higher than general estimates made during last year’s Waste Plan consultation. This is a result of inflationary cost rises, recycling costing more to process at facilities near Whanganui, and the need to include council overheads in the long-term plan amendment calculation (even though these would not be an extra charge to ratepayers, since they would be offset by reductions in other council rates).
The targeted rate for households in the kerbside collection areas has now been calculated at $2.58 weekly for recycling and $1.17 weekly for food waste.
“Even though cost estimates are now higher,” Mike Fermor says, “we’ve managed to keep them in line with what other regions charge, like Palmerston North where the targeted rate for kerbside recycling is $2.50.”
There’s a range of ways to give feedback on the council’s annual plan and long-term plan amendment consultation:
The council’s Revenue and Financing Policy consultation – which decides how the council’s activities are funded – runs alongside the annual plan and long-term plan amendment consultation. To submit on the Revenue and Financing Policy consultation, visit www.whanganui.govt.nz/rfp-2022-23
Both consultations close at 5.00pm on Friday, 29 April.