Mountains of mingled ‘recyclables’ are piled high behind the Visy operated MRF plant close to the Manukau Harbour in Onehunga.

Recycling consultant Warren Snow had a look at it recently when attending a nearby Packaging Council meeting. “Someone said it was there so we went and had a look. I saw a phone, toys, food, junk and plastics. By weight it’s mainly glass but I suspect a lot of it is contaminated so it’s not a saleable product unless it can be separated and cleaned,” said Mr Snow.

While the pile was mostly glass, “it was all mixed and it was hard to know just what it was we were seeing,” he said. “What’s there is anyone’s guess.”

Visy management had not responded to our enquiry at the time of going to press but another industry source told Gulf News this week that the two growing glass-and-rubbish mountains have been gathered from the Auckland, Manukau, Waitakere and North Shore city councils.

Well-sorted recyclables trump co-mingled wheelie-bins

Although large-scale recycling plants like the Visy Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) plant at Onehunga are looking for government handouts to deal with mountains of unsaleable glass and ‘co-mingled’ recyclables, smaller community-based  operations are still finding markets for their much higher quality products.

Visy general manager Lee Smith told Campbell Live last Thursday that the Australian-based international giant would need government backing to survive the downturn in international prices.

“This short-term economic crisis should not be allowed to cause this enormously valuable activity to collapse. There has to be some sort of support by central government,” he said.

The nine-month-old Onehunga Visy plant is a joint venture that includes Auckland and Manukau city councils. Queenstown also has a MRF plant and Christchurch has one on order. Visy Industries was established in Melbourne in 1948 and is one of the world’s largest privately-owned paper recycling and packaging companies. Manufacturing revenues exceeded $2.5 billion in 2003 and manufacturing assets were over $3 billion.

However, Northland Clean Stream manager Simon Millichamp says that large cities and companies have adopted mixed wheelie bin collections where all recyclables are thrown together into a collection truck and then sorted later. As a result they have a contaminated product that is hard to sell “at the best of times”.

“Some larger operators have in the past been caught dumping recycled material because they can not even sell it locally, let alone on offshore markets.”

Sorting at source and by hand is more labour-intensive but results in a product which can be sold rather than dumped. Income from the recycled materials effectively creates local employment “which is especially important given the economic times,” he says.

“We need to look at the long term both economically and environmentally. Both refuse and recycling cost money. Refuse prices will rise with the government’s introduction of a waste levy later this year and will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.

“Money spent on recycling provides local jobs and looks after our local environment. Money spent on landfilling is money thrown away.”

Clean Stream Northland is a joint venture between Te Runanga o te Rarawa and the Community Business and Environment Centre and operates recycling and waste services throughout the Far North under contract to the Far North District Council.

“After 20 years of recycling, our community would not be happy if we dumped their recyclables. As long as the product is well sorted and clean, we are sure the material coming from our community will continue to be in demand,” says Mr Millichamp.

Contacted by Gulf News, Clean Stream Waiheke’s executive manager John Stansfield agreed, saying the issue comes down to the sorting of recyclables.

Waiheke’s recycling operation at the Ostend Transfer Station follows the same pattern of hand-sorting and separation at source as the Clean Stream Northland recycling operations.

“If it’s not sorted well, it is worth less,” he said. “What we do is sort it as well as we possibly can by hand and then compact it. It gives us a higher quality product to sell and it is cheaper to transport.

“We’ve had recycling companies down from Europe, Australia, and China who have said we do sorting really well. That matters because recycling machinery generally chews up material and contaminated bales are worth less.

In an unstable market, Clean Stream Waiheke have some good news.“We have gained the trust of a client who wants to buy us a plastic chipping machine when we have the transfer station upgrade because they have confidence in our sorting. The chipped pieces will be more higher value and have greater density therefore lower freight costs.”•