Consultation on kerbside costings coming up
Published on 23 March 2022
Whanganui District councillors have given the go ahead to consult on the Annual Plan 2022-23 and an amendment to the Long-Term Plan 2021-31, from Tuesday, 29 March.
The Annual Plan sets out how the council’s work for the current financial year will be funded. This year an amendment to the council’s long-term plan is required to include kerbside services for recycling and food waste.
The council’s chief financial officer, Mike Fermor, says last year the community was asked whether or not we should introduce kerbside recycling and food waste collections. Councillors considered community feedback and, in late 2021, voted in favour of introducing the services for environmental reasons.
The next step in the council’s process is to consult on an amendment to the long-term plan to formally introduce the new services and obtain the required funding.
“We’ve gone through the detailed modelling process a contractor would go through to understand how to make the services successful and cost-effective in the Whanganui context and when consultation opens we’d like to hear your thoughts.”
Disposing of waste to landfills, especially food waste, is a major source of greenhouse gases. Mayor Hamish McDouall says the new services are vital to address climate change and he encourages everyone to give feedback.
“While the pandemic and geopolitics are dominating headlines and headspaces, climate change considerations don’t wait. We mustn’t lose sight of our climate change obligations during these unsettling times.”
He says central government’s Transforming Recycling plan indicates councils will likely need to provide a kerbside food waste collection in future and Whanganui District Council is “an early adopter”.
“We’re wanting to get ahead on this because food waste that goes into rubbish bins and ends up at the landfill produces methane, which accelerates climate change,” Mayor Hamish says.
He says some people in our community compost food scraps and regularly visit the recycling centre, but this has been difficult for others.
“With equitable access to recycling plus a kerbside food waste collection, we can make a real advance towards our climate change objectives.
“Together our community can divert an estimated 4,500 tonnes from landfill each year.”
Mike Fermor says modelling shows the service needs to be provided to the Whanganui city urban area and Fordell, Marybank and Mowhanau villages to be cost-effective.
He said households in those areas would not be able to opt out of the services.
“To keep costs as low as possible, we need to take an ‘all-in’ approach.”
Kerbside recycling would collect plastics 1, 2 and 5, as well as glass bottles and jars, aluminum cans, steel cans and tins and paper and card.
Kerbside food waste would collect raw food scraps and also cooked food, dairy, meat, fish and some compostable packaging.
Several factors have meant cost estimates are higher than indicated during last year’s consultation.
“With detailed modelling we’ve found recycling processing is higher at facilities near Whanganui, and that affects the calculation, as well as general inflationary cost escalation since last year.
“Also, we need to include council overheads in our calculation even though they’re not an extra cost to ratepayers. Council overheads for kerbside services would be offset by reductions in other council rates so the net rates increase would actually be lower than the targeted rate,” Mike Fermor says.
Detailed modelling shows the targeted rate for households in the kerbside collection areas would be $2.58 weekly for recycling and $1.17 weekly for food waste.
“The new estimates are in line with what other councils charge – for example, Palmerston North City Council has a targeted rates charge of $2.50 weekly for kerbside recycling,” Mike Fermor says.
He says with the new services, households that are new to recycling and composting could potentially save money on rubbish costs, with less going into the rubbish bin.
The consultation for the new services sits alongside the Annual Plan 2022-23.
“For this year’s Annual Plan, I’m pleased to say our rates increase – at 3.9% – is one of the lowest in the region and in line with what we indicated it would be last year. Considering the general rate of inflation is close to 6% we think this is a good result for our community,” Mayor McDouall says.
“The council is working hard to plot a path ahead in this time of uncertainty and to forge on with core projects that will make our incredible district an even better place to live.”