Newspapers for tip

Press, 21 January 1982, Page 4

Newspapers for tip

More than 50 tonnes of recycled newspaper will be dumped at the Christchurch City Council’s Bexley tip this morning.

Moisture has seeped into the newspaper piles, which may have been worth $3OOO if markets had been available, and the paper stacks have begun to warm up inside the recycling shed. That has brought a slight risk of spontaneous combustion.

“It is just not worth the risk of keeping them around,” said the council’s resource development manager, Mr Brian Anderson, yesterday. “If it burns the centre down, that’s $17,000 down the drain.”

Newspapers have stacked up because the City Council has been unable to find a

large enough market for them. New markets have been sought since N.Z. Forest Products put a quota on the Canterbury Paper Company, which had been buying the bundled newspapers from the council.

The newspapers had already started to become a storage problem. “It’s bad news for old news,” said the council’s resource recovery committe chairman, Cr G. D. Stanley. "We might have to say we will leave the newspapers alone for a while. I’m not saying we will do that soon, but we may have to look at this aspect,” he said. The storage problem would get worse if markets did not improve because more areas of the city were

being brought into the recyling collection scheme. “We are getting to a better position where we will be able to come out of the woodwork and publicise this citywide,” Cr Stanley said. Newspapers now at the recyling centre had not been stacked as well as they might have been, and there had been “a break in newspaper acceptance. There is some concern over heat in the centre of the pile, and Canterbury Paper is only out for top quality paper,” he said.

The council’s recycling scheme, attacked by critics as being too expensive, will rely on dependable markets for the materials collected. Kraft, metal, cullet, and bottles are also accepted by recycling collections.