The people at Christchurch’s recycling plant know what you did this summer.
And they’re struggling to keep up with how much you drank and the amount of presents you unwrapped.
The festive season of imbibing and gift-giving places strain on the region’s recycling services, with an extra 30 tonnes of paper, plastic, glass and aluminium arriving at the Parkhouse Road site each week.
It is the first stop for kerbside recyclable items from Christchurch, Selwyn and the Waimakariri District.
Mountains of rubbish from the previous Christmas were finally cleared in October, but Meta Processing manager Rod White said he planned to clear this Christmas pile by February.
“We take a load out and the piles just creep back up the fence. Since the start of November there’s been a rapid increase in volumes – people have started drinking and making pavs again,” he said.
As White stands on the edge of the paper and cardboard section opening plastic bags filled with Christmas wrapping paper, it is clear the festive season is responsible for more work.
“We’ve had a massive hit of cardboard and wrapping paper, but this year we’re getting a lot of cellophane – shiny wrap which we can’t recycle. That’s annoying,” he said.
White has hired 12 extra temporary staff to keep the mountains moving.
Workers keep up with a fast-moving conveyor belt of cans or plastics. Everything is sorted manually.
White said his biggest wish would be for householders to take the lids off plastic bottles and rinse cans.
“People don’t really understand that everything here is sorted by hand. We don’t want dirty nappies or needles sent to us,” he said.
“The staff here are fantastic and they actually have to pick up cans which might have three-week-old dried-up dog food in them, so it would be nice if people just gave them a rinse.”
