Recycling FAQ

Each household has two wheelie bins. The wheelie bin service is for all residential dwellings houses in the rural and urban areas.

One is a large, 240-litre bin for household plastics 1,2 and 5, tins, cans, paper and cardboard. The second is a smaller 140-litre wheelie bin, just for glass bottles and jars.

The 240L wheelie bin for plastics 1,2 and 5, cans, tins, paper and cardboard are collected fortnightly. The 140L wheelie bin for glass are collected monthly. You can check your upcoming recycling dates here.

Please contact the council and request wheelie bin service. An invoice for the remaining number of complete months of recycling service will be generated and sent to you for payment. This is a pro rata based off the full years charge of $103.00. Once Council receives payment, wheelie bins will be delivered to your property within 5 working days. Please wait until you are living in the property and can secure the bins on delivery. It is not advisable to leave wheelie bins in empty houses.

If this is an existing building (not a new build) please contact your landlord or the seller in the first instance and ask them to track down the wheelie bins that were at the property. All properties in Waipā had a set of wheelie bins delivered in July 2019 and the serial numbers were recorded against that property. They are to stay at the property.

Landlords, you can call the council and get the serial numbers printed on the bins to help you locate them. If they can’t be found or recovered from previous tenants, they will need to be replaced by the ratepayer.

Other councils around New Zealand have found theft of wheelie bins rare mostly due to their size. To reduce the risk of theft the new wheelie bins have prominent Waipa District Council branding, are printed with an individual serial number and have an embedded chip which can be scanned. Both of these identifiers will be assigned to your property address. Stray wheelie bins will be able to be scanned and returned to their assigned address.

No. The wheelie bins are the property of Council and must stay at their assigned address to be used for kerbside collection. If your new property does not have wheelie bins, contact the seller or the landlord in the first instance.

If your wheelie bin cannot be found, check with your neighbours to see they didn't accidentally take your bin, then give Council a call to get a new one issued.

Any replacement wheelie bins needed because of customer damage or loss will be charged to the ratepayer.

The proposed costs for this in the 2020/21 rating year are:

• 240L Mixed recycling wheelie bin $62.57
• 140L Glass only wheelie bin $60.70

This covers the manufacture, storage, delivery, onsite assembly, administration and updating of the serial number and chip identifier on Council and contractor systems.

No. This does not mean you own the wheelie bins, they are the property of Council. The charge covers the manufacture, storage, delivery, onsite assembly, administration and updating of the serial number and chip identifier on Council systems, not the bin itself.

No. According to Council's Solid Waste Management and Minimisation Bylaw 2018 customers are not able to provide their own wheelie bins. Council needs to make sure the wheelie bins are compatible with its recycling trucks and technology and to ensure there is no damage to trucks or danger to staff.

Yes! Your recycling will continue to be collected like normal on public holidays. If your usual recycling collection day is on a public holiday, please put it out on the kerbside.

Those people unable to manage wheelie bins due to physical disabilities or impairments are able to apply for a free Council-funded assisted service. The assisted service will ensure wheelie bins are pushed to the kerbside for emptying and collection. They will be pushed back again once recycling has been collected. There is no charge for this extra help, but there are rules around who can access it.

To find out more about the assisted recycling collection service and whether you are eligible, give us a call on 0800 WAIPA DC (0800 924 723).

You are welcome to store the wheelie bins inside your property boundary, close to the end of your driveway. You can use your old blue crate to ferry your recycling to the wheelie bins as you used to do. Wheelie bins are not able to be stored on public land, on the berm or on the road. They do need to be stored in your property.

Since the Waipā Recycling Sorting Centre was completed in February 2020, all of Waipa’s mixed recycling is being hand sorted by a team of hardworking locals, right here in Te Awamutu. Our glass bottles and jars are held onsite (so that we have enough to move it cost efficiently) and then transported O-I Glass in Auckland. They are New Zealand's only glass bottle and jar manufacturer and have been operating since 1922. Read more on their website: O-I Glass.

Recycling in Waipā is generally only sent to landfill if it is contaminated or if it is the incorrect material such as plastic grades 3, 4, 6 & 7.

Contamination includes things like dirty cans and tins, greasy and unclean cardboard, green waste, clothing and general waste.

Unfortunately even a small amount of contamination can lead to a whole load of otherwise good recycling going to landfill so it is really important residents only put clean recyclable items in their wheelie bins.

No, research shows there is plenty of capacity in the 140-litre wheelie bin. A bin bigger than 140-litres for glass will be too heavy for many people to easily move, and unsafe for the contractor. If you have more glass recycling that the 140-litre bin can hold, you will need to take it to a transfer station as you do now. There may be a charge for that.

Remember that your wheelie bins do not have to be full before you put them out. You should put them out on every collection day. The footprint of the smaller wheelie bin is not significantly less than the larger one.

Some work needs to be done to assess the number of people who might like this to ensure manufacturing of a smaller bin is possible.

Yes absolutely! Council will continue to raise awareness about waste minimisation. This programme is funded by the government, via the Ministry for the Environment.

If we can minimise the consumption of products like lower grade plastics, we can lessen our impact on the environment, and protect ourselves from market charges in the recycling and waste sectors.

Currently this service is not provided, however It's possible there may also be recycling wheelie bins for commercial and industrial premises in the future. We would need to talk directly to businesses to see if they'd be prepared to pay for the recycling wheelie bin service, as this is not covered by household rates.

This would be funded via a new targeted rate on all commercial and industrial properties.

Rubbish collection in Waipā is not a service provided by the Council. Rubbish is collected by a private company on a user-pays basis. Council's new recycling contract does not change that. If you would like a wheelie bin for your rubbish, please talk directly to one of the private companies that offers this service.

At this stage, no, there will not be a food waste collection. But we are watching locations in New Zealand that already have food waste collections to see what system might work best for our district and what it might cost.

Council will continue to support ways for the community to learn how to reduce food waste. We already support the Food Lovers Master Classes' with Kate Meads and the free Easy Choice Healthy Kai' cookbooks. We will also continue to support the national Love Food Hate Waste programme.

Owned and operated by Council’s recycling contractor, Metallic Sweeping, the Waipā recycling sorting centre processes mixed recycling such as cardboard, paper, tins, can and plastics 1, 2 & 5 into clean, single stream bales to be on sold. Around 16 staff work full time at the sorting centre which is located in Te Awamutu.

It is not currently open to the public for recycling drop offs but this may change in the future.

The Waipa Waste Minimisation team will be running regular education tours, if you are interested in attending please add your email here.