Keeping Southland's recycling clean | WasteMINZ

While most Southlanders living in Invercargill City and Southland District recycle correctly, some bins still contain contaminated items, which undermines everyone’s efforts. Take-away food containers and cups with leftovers still inside, nappies, and other contaminants can cause entire truckloads to be sent to landfill instead of being sorted, sold, and reused.

This not only wastes valuable resources but also increases costs for waste management. Since Southland’s recycling is hand-sorted, high contamination can also pose serious health risks to workers handling the materials. Additionally, once a contaminated load reaches the sorting facility, there is no way to recover it, making proper recycling essential.

To tackle this, WasteNet Southland has reintroduced recycling bin inspections with three key goals:

• Reduce waste going to landfill by reducing contaminated loads of recycling having to be disposed of.
• Protect those who sort recycling by hand from unnecessary health hazards by ensuring only clean recyclables arrive at the MRF (Materials Recovery Facility).
• Save ratepayers money by reducing transport and disposal costs associated with contaminated loads.

The what:

Whirika developed and delivered a comprehensive educational programme for residents and a complete training package for commercial contractors implementing the inspections. WasteNet Southland hosts an extensive dashboard for use by call centre staff and waste teams to monitor inspections.    

Progress So Far:

Now in its seventh week running, the bin inspectors have inspected over 7,000 kerbside bins, leaving educational materials on how to improve recycling habits and reduce contamination. 96% of inspected bins thus far have been emptied as usual (85% were great and 11% needed some extra education), while 4% of inspected bins contained significant contamination and could not be emptied until the contamination was removed by the resident.

Results:

Results of the first seven-weeks of inspections have shown some concrete changes. For example, the first inspections in the township of Manapouri showed the majority of residents were recycling right with 13% needing guidance, on the second round of inspections this had improved and 100% of properties were doing a great job.

Fiona Walker, Director of WasteNet Southland, said “This is the first township where we’ve achieved 100% green, so it was pretty exciting to see a completely green map on the dashboard”.

Anecdotal evidence from the bin inspectors indicate that for some residents having their bin not emptied is enough to change their behaviour and remove offending non-recyclable items. However, a small number of residents have continued to misuse their bins — some even attempting to bypass the system by removing tags and putting their bin out again.

What’s Next?

The three-strike system came into effect from 31 March 2025. If a bin is repeatedly contaminated, with no indication of improved habits, it will be removed from kerbside collection. Residents can avoid this by following the recycling rules, and reviewing the feedback provided by the Bin Inspectors after each inspection.

Niki is a leading expert in sustainability and waste recovery in New Zealand. With a PhD in Sustainability from the University of Otago (2013), she has been with Whirika since 2014.

She helps businesses, councils, and communities transition to low-carbon, zero-waste, and resilient systems through strategic planning and facilitation. Specialising in material recovery, she advises companies or councils on waste reduction, has led major waste audits, and managed urban recycling projects.

Niki also leads Whirika’s local food initiatives, recently completing foodshed and food system analyses for Buller District, Wellington Region and the Waikato Region.