Napier City Council decides to charge for replacement recycling crates
Napier residents will now face a charge for the replacement of stolen, lost or damaged recycling crates.
Since Napier City Council adopted a new recycling service on November 1, whereby three crates of pre-sorted recycling are collected from the kerbside, it is estimated about 20 have needed to be replaced per week.
Of the three crates, one is for glass, one for paper and the other is for type 1 and 2 plastics and cans.
In October, about 75,000 crates were delivered to houses across the city.
The decision to charge for replacement crates was taken at a council meeting yesterday.
Environmental solutions manager for Napier City Council, Cameron Burton said the cost associated with this premature level of loss on top of the amount catered for in the contract is $10,000 to $15,000 per annum.
“In order to encourage residents to place a value on this service and to ensure their Council owned crates are looked after in a suitable manner, a charge to cover the costs of the crate and associated administration is recommended.”
He added that it is “unfair for ratepayers who look after their council-owned crates to effectively bear the cost of crates damaged by others”. Furthermore, it reduces the effectiveness of waste minimisation if additional plastic crates are handed out without charge.
Ratepayers will need to pay $15 including GST per replacement crate.
The cost of the crate including transport to the Napier depot is $11.67 incl. GST.
In addition to this, Burton said there is a cost related to un-issuing the missing crates, issuing a new crate, printing and adding the waterproof address labels, adding them to the asset database and delivering them to the property.
The contract allows for 500 sets across the city per annum to maintain the service (2 per cent of the total). Many of these are destined for new build properties, of which Napier has around 200 to 400 per annum, Burton said.
