THE PRESS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1979. Making use of rubbish

Press, 20 February 1979, Page 18

THE PRESS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1979. Making use of rubbish

The expansion of the Christchurch City Council’s rubbish recycling scheme certainly does not mean that the metropolitan rubbish disposal scheme will soon be unnecessary. Only small numbers of households in small areas of the city have shown themselves willing to sort their rubbish regularly so that materials suitable for recycling can be collected separately. At least enough households, however, have been willing to co-operate with the recycling scheme to prevent the experiment falling flat on its face.

Recycling on a large scale offers considerable advantages. Local bodies are able to earn small sums of money while reducing the need for disposal by way of land-till. In Christchurch, if the metropolitan disposal scheme could even be scaled down, the savings might be considerable. Nationally, recycling offers new opportunities for employment, saves overseas funds, and may even reduce the country’s energy needs. This growing awareness that it benefits the country and the community to recover reusable materials from rubbish. as well as a growing sense of economy and dislike of waste, surely explain why some householders have been willing to go to the extra trouble of sorting their rubbish and watching for special collection days. The problem now is to get more and more householders in the trial areas to go to this trouble

Sentiments of conservation and economy are not equally strong in all households. Unless the system is simple and convenient, most will not cooperate, however much they sympathise with the theory and the ideals behind the scheme. The council, as promoter of the scheme, is well aware of this and is continuing to experiment with various methods and patterns of collecting materials in order to establish which method most householders prefer. Most of the requirements of the system are not in fact onerous and it

may be simply a matter of time to accustom people to what is required of them.

It is not unreasonable, surely, to expect householders to flatten tins or tie old newspapers correctly. Many do so already. It is not much more difficult to keep different materials separately and to follow a simple calendar showing the collection days for particular materials. If the community decides that the benefits of recycling are worth pursuing without training or encouraging householders to follow a simple, do-it-themselves system, local authorities will have to secure expensive machinery to separate useful materials from general refuse. It is at least worth giving the first course a decent trial. The recycling scheme should not be expected, at least in its early stages, to pay its own way. The return from selling the materials recovered is not likely to pay all the costs of collecting and sorting. A profit may, however, be shown once the attitudes and habits of enough householders have changed. Certain economies of scale are expected to follow even the modest expansion of the scheme that is contemplated for pilot areas in March. The process also promises < to be self-sustaining. Once materials are being recovered in sufficient quantities it will become economic to acquire new equipment and machinery that will make the recycling operation progressively more efficient.

Already commercial firms are considering purchasing a de-inking plant for paper and a de-tinning plant for tinned cans. Both of these pieces of machinery will give two important components of household rubbish an added value. It will be a happy day for the South Island, too, when materials that can be recycled are being recovered here in sufficient quantities to make it unnecessary to ship such materials as scrap metal, glass, and paper to North Island plants.