Cutting Regional efforts to speed up recycling and reuse of solid waste are going ahead well, says the chairman of the Canterbury Waste Subcommittee Denis O’Rourke.

“The focus of our work now is almost entirely on waste minimisation issues on a regional basis,” Councillor O’Rourke said at a recent meeting of the Christchurch City Council.

“We are now looking at a Canterbury-wide regime based on the Recovered Materials Foundation (RMF),” he said, “and the focus is on finding ways to make landfills like the one proposed for Kate Valley redundant.”

The committee, which represents six councils, circulating a submission in support of the Kate Valley Landfill project. It was being put in front of all six councils, “so that anyone who wants to have an input into it has that opportunity. Any suggestions will be very welcome.”

The RMF is an independent trust set up to develop sustainable and viable markets for waste materials. Its agreements with the Christchurch City Council include those for taking in, processing and selling material collected through the city’s kerbside collection system, managing the Recycling Centres at the city’s transfer stations, and running a grant and loan funds to help establish new businesses to reuse and recycle waste material. It has a similar agreement with the Waimakariri District Council.

The RMF has been working for about three years and, in that time, the volume of recyclable material it handles has risen from around 9000 tonnes to almost 17,000t a year. Its current budget is about $2.5 million and it expects this financial year to earn about $1.7m from the sale of recycled and reused material.

New CEO appointed

The RMF’s new chief executive is Darfield businessman Richard Lloyd.

The former Army engineer took over last month, replacing Graeme King, who resigned in March.

Mr Lloyd founded Waitaha Glass eight years ago. The company develops commercial uses for recycled glass, including making art glass and glass flooring tiles.

“This selection reflects the RMF board’s desire for it to move strongly in the direction of local business development using recycled materials,” Cr O’Rourke says.