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City Scene - Christchurch City Council Newsletter - March 1996
Every day at the Parkhouse Refuse Transfer Station in Wigram a dedicated team of Council staff process tonnes of Christchurch's unwanted household rubbish for reuse or recycling.
They are based at the transfer station's Resource Recovery Centre where city residents can drop off waste material without having to pay anything, provided it's accepted for recycling or all, or part, can be reused.
Graeme Ensor (who has been working at Resource Recovery about six months, first on the Job Skills programme and now permanently) observes that the idea is not only a bonus for the environment but a practical and economic option for those who use the facility.
"Householders save money because the more of their trailer or boot-load they can of fload at the centre for free, the less they have to pay at the pit," he says. Graeme's enthusiasm is typical of the staff who work at the resource recovery centres, which are based at all three metropolitan transfer stations in Christchurch. He says it's great to see people coming in to drop off their recyclables and other material, like old furniture, whiteware and household appliances.
"You can see they feel that they've achieved something for the environment, done their bit for recycling and they go away happy," notes Graeme. "It gives you a good feeling when you see whole families coming in and the kids all run off to the different bins, carefully separating the material for recycling."
However, it's not just families and children that take advantage of the service: students, young couples, older people, in fact people from all walks of life, come in each day to ensure their waste is disposed of as sustainably as possible.
The types of household waste the Resource Recovery Centres at Parkhouse, Bromley and the Styx Mill transfer stations can recycle are: newsprint; corrut,ated cardboard; glass bottles and jars; all P.E.T. plastic marked with the number 1 inside the recycling symbol, including 500ml to 2 litre soft drink boffles; plastic milk bottles; plastic ice cream containers; some margarine and butter containers; all aluminium cans; all tin cans that have been used for food; empty paint tins; aerosol containers; steel cans with labels; milk and juice cartons and used car engine oil.
As well as all that, the centres accept all scrap metal, clean clothing and shoes, furniture, car batteries and anything else that looks like it can be reused.
However, it's important that for any of these products to be successfully processed, they should all be cleaned and, where appropriate, flattened.
All the reusable items are either stripped and sold as parts to the public (vacuum cleaner hoses and heads are very popular items) or sold as is (such as old televisions and bicycles).
Kent Vaux, Parkhouse Transfer Station supervisor, observes with a laugh, "Some people have taken away more stuff that they've bought, than what they came in with!"
The teams working in Resource Recovery assert that about half the waste brought in is reusable, recyclable or can be composted by the Council's composting plant at Bromley.