Refuse a 'potential asset’

Press, 27 January 1979, Page 7

Refuse a 'potential asset’

PA‘ Auckland Domestic refuse could become an asset to New Zealand cities rather than a liability, engineers attending the congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science have been told. A system of compacting and baling rubbish could be adopted and used in setting up golf courses, playing fields, and urban reserves, said Mr G. A. Hutchinson, chief engineer of the Waitemata City Council.

Mr Hutchinson said that the American-devised system would overcome many of the drawbacks of dis-< posing or rubbish at landfill sites. Finding new sites was a big problem, and landfill sites had a variety of environmental disadvantages. Regulations governing the siting and working of landfill schemes were becoming more stringent, and with good cause in many cases. Mr Hutchinson said that

when refuse was disposed of in condensed bales it was unnecessary to seek low-lying sites sucli as gullies. Mounds could be made from flat land for golf courses or parks and reserves by stacking the bales like building blocks. The system could be used to surround sports fields with terraces or to making playing fields from sloping land. The machinery needed to process the bales would be quiet, odourless free of dust, and’ could be contained inside an ordinary

factory, Mr Hutchinson said. The capital cost of installing a plant to handle 200 tonnes of refuse each day would be SI.2M; the annual running costs would be $69,000. The over-all cost of the project was estimated to be 59 per cent of the cost of taking refuse to another city landfill site and paying tipping charges for using it, Mr Hutchinson said.