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Cutting Waste Key to Holding Landfill Costs

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 15:01 CDT

REDUCTION of solid waste has become so crucial to prolonging landfill life that Taranaki councils are looking at making small wheeliebins the standard, and putting a premium on use of larger bins.

The agreement by all Taranaki local authorities to close their local dumps and landfills and direct all solid waste to New Plymouth's Colson Rd purpose-designed sanitary landfill will effectively halve the life of Colson Rd from 30 to 15 years.

South Taranaki District engineer John Sutton, a member of the regional waste management project team, says: "If we can significantly reduce the waste stream at source, we can extend the life of the Colson Rd facility and that is the objective we are working on. Promotion of recycling and waste reduction are tools we can use; a greenwaste composting scheme is another.

"We can't avoid dealing with this problem because future landfill costs will be a lot higher than present. The wheeliebin is the key to landfill life and people can hide all sorts of inappropriate waste in them. We estimate that 40% of all material going into our landfills can be diverted for recycling and that seems to be the way we have to go.

"One tool we can use is to limit the size of household wheeliebins by making the small bin the standard for one week's refuse, and charging a premium on bigger bins."

South Taranaki district has two landfills -- one each at Patea and Manaia -- and five transfer stations, and a weekly kerbside residual waste and recycle collection. Both landfills will close within two years.

Stratford district uses a landfill at King Rd, near Inglewood, which is expected to close late next year.

The tentative plan for beyond Colson Rd is for a new regional landfill south of Eltham, which has been approved, but Mr Sutton says there might be insufficient volume to get the economies of scale to keep the transport and disposal costs at a reasonable level.

"It may be cheaper to extend the usable life of Colson Rd and avoid the Eltham site as long as possible, and by then the economics of a very large trans-regional landfill at Bonny Glen near Feilding could be viable. At this stage we do not know whether trucking or railing of pre-compacted refuse will be more competitive."

The waste management project team from the three district councils has invited proposals from contractors for waste collection and transfer station management to reduce residual waste and increase recycling, Mr Sutton said.

Source: Daily News; New Plymouth, New Zealand

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