FAQs

Every six years, Council has to review its Waste Minimisation and Management Plan (WMMP) plan to ‘promote effective and efficient waste management and minimisation”, to comply with the Waste Minimisation Act (2008). 

The plan is a guide for how the District will minimise and manage its waste for the next six years and also protect resources and the environment. 

Most of the materials we use or create end up in landfill once we are finished with them.

Every year New Zealanders generate 17 million tonnes of waste and we send 13 million tonnes of it to landfill.

The way we manage that waste is behind many other developed countries.

When we don’t manage waste creation or disposal as well as we could, it costs us and our environment. It can have impacts on public health, as well as create challenges for our future generations.

Last year we sent 9,433 tonnes of waste to landfill – an average of 396 kilograms per person (that's 3 1/3 wool sacks full each).

2,460 tonnes of waste did not go to landfill thanks to kerbside recycling or because it was dropped off to a resource recovery or recycling site.

Currently, Waitaki waste is collected from households and businesses by private companies who take it to a Refuse Transfer Station (RTS) , or gets taken to an RTS by households and industry. 

The waste then goes out of the district for disposal with most going to a landfill in Southland and some to a landfill in Canterbury.

Because Council doesn’t run a kerbside waste collection there are some gaps in what we know about our waste. We do know that a lot of our waste doesn’t need to go to landfill. It could be put to other uses.

About one third of what we send to landfill is organic waste, mostly food scraps and garden waste.

This produces greenhouse gases when it breaks down in the landfills and it is a missed opportunity to create a useful natural product to feed back into our soils.

Approximately 15% of what goes to landfill is material that could easily be turned into another product.

Building waste makes just over 8% of what goes to landfill and could be used for something else instead of being chucked away.

There are different ways we can fund our WMMP actions.  

These are:

• Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC) - a fixed charge paid by all ratepayers
• User Charges -includes user-pays collections and transfer station gate fees
• Targeted rates  - a charge for those properties that get the Council service
• Waste Disposal Levy - Government gives 50% of its $50 per tonne waste disposal levy to local authorities on a per capita basis. This money must be used for waste minimisation activities
• Waste Minimisation Fund - most of the remaining 50% of the waste disposal levy goes to projects picked by the Ministry for the Environment
• Sale of recovered materials - this can be used to help offset the cost of some actions
• Private sector funding - Businesses may choose to fund certain waste minimisation activities

Budgets for the Action Plan will be developed in our Annual Plan and Long Term Plan.