New Collection - started on 1 October

Click here to download the 'Your Rubbish and Recycling Service: What you need to know' Guide.

Our collection has changed for the better

South Taranaki District Council is passionate about doing what we can to protect our environment, and this new system will reduce the amount of waste each household sends to landfill.

What's happening?

From 1 October, a new contractor, Waste Management NZ, took over responsibility for our solid waste services and there is a big change in the way we collect recycling and rubbish at the kerbside.

Each property has:

One 140L red-lidded wheelie bin for general waste
One 240L yellow-lidded wheelie bin for mixed recycling
One blue glass recycling crate
One 23L food scraps bin (please look inside this bin for a guide to the new collection as well as your collection calendar).

General waste, mixed recycling and glass collections are collected fortnightly and the food scraps bin is picked up on a weekly basis.

Each week is designated as either a Red Week or a Yellow Week.

When your collection rolls around on a Red Week – you can put your food scraps bin, landfill bin and green waste bin (if you have subscribed to this service) on your kerbside to be collected.

If it is a Yellow Week – you can put your food scraps bin, mixed recycling bin and glass crate out on your kerbside come your collection day.

You’ll see that each bin is only getting collected fortnightly, with the exception of our food scraps bin which will be picked up weekly.

Why did it need to change?

Our solid waste contract lapsed at the end of September 2024. So when we went out to tender the new contract in 2023 it made sense to review the service.

We went out to public consultation at the end of 2023 with two different options as part of our Waste Management and Minimisation Plan. After receiving 777 submissions on the subject, Councillors had to make the decision of which way to go, which wasn't an easy task given the near even 50/50 split between those wanting weekly and fortnightly collection.

“Ultimately, we felt the fortnightly option provided the best balance between keeping costs down (fortnightly was considerably cheaper than weekly collection) while encouraging people to reduce waste and send less waste to landfill,” says South Taranaki Mayor Phil Nixon. “We are simply sending too much waste to landfill, which is not sustainable either environmentally or financially.”

Councillors also decided that residents would be able to purchase an extra general waste bin if they had special circumstances (such as larger families).

Currently, South Taranaki residents send around 120 kgs of waste per person to landfill each year, which is 30 kgs more per person than New Plymouth residents.

“Part of the reason for that is New Plymouth’s kerbside waste is only collected fortnightly, with food waste collected weekly. We also know that about 60% of what we're putting in our rubbish bins could be recycled or composted. We simply must change our behaviour and do better.”

Mayor Nixon says managing the district’s waste is only going to get more expensive due to government levies being placed on all waste sent to landfill and increased costs for the kerbside collection service such as fuel and new collection trucks.

For every tonne of waste sent to landfill, the council must pay the government a $60 levy. Government legislation also requires all councils to have a kerbside food scrap collection in place by 2030, which we are proud to say this new collection covers.