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Last modified: 29 Jul 2020 10:19am

A rubbish truck on a suburban street lifting a green organics bin

Rubbish and recycling collections in Selwyn are continuing as normal during the Level 4 Alert period, however there will be changes to the processing of recycling.

Recycling will be collected as normal, however, from Monday it will temporarily be taken to Pines Resource Recovery Park for disposal as general waste.

Council’s kerbside recycling processing partner EcoCentral Ltd have had to temporarily pause operations because of the high risk of COVID-19 contamination for staff sorting the recycling at the regional sorting facility in Christchurch. Because of the volume of recycling coming in every week the Council and EcoCentral do not have the space to safely store it for sorting later.

In addition, many offshore recycling plants are closing or suspending operations because of the pandemic, meaning there are no outlets for the materials.

Council Solid Waste Manager Andrew Boyd says the decision has not been taken lightly.

“We’re really disappointed that this step has had to be taken. We’re in the same position that many other areas of the country find themselves in of having to make this temporary change.”

Despite the change to the way recycling is handled in the interim, the collection process will not change, and people should keep sorting recycling, and putting out their bins as normal.

“It’s really important that you continue to sort your recycling and put it out in the yellow bin as normal. We’ll still be collecting it from the kerbside and we will restart the processing of recyclables as soon as possible. So it’s important to be ready and help us limit the amount of recycling going to landfill when we are able to start recycling again.”

Our organics kerbside collection and processing is continuing as normal.

What can you do?

  • Please continue to separate your recyclables from your general waste. This is only a temporary situation and we don’t want people losing their good recycling skills for when processing recommences!
  • Use paper and cardboard in your fireplace if you have one, or consider home composting these.
  • If you are considering stockpiling any recycling, please ensure it is clean first (to avoid odour and vermin). For plastics, we would suggest only keeping clean plastics of grades 1, 2 and 5 – these have the best long term options for recycling.