Community Plan 2009-2019

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Section 13: Summary of Waste Management Plan

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This section summarises the Waste Management Planis and is divided into the following eight areas.

• Introduction
• Goals
• Objectives
• Policies
• Waste minimisation
• Waste disposal
• General
• Monitoring

1. Introduction

The Council's Waste Management Plan (WMP) was approved on 21 June 2005. The WMP outlines how the district coordinates with the New Zealand Waste Strategy - Towards Zero Waste and a sustainable New Zealand, and the Regional Waste Strategy for Taranaki. It provides a practical guide to the waste management practices and policies of New Plymouth District Council and outlines how the Council will work with the community and other local authorities to:

• Undertake or contract out waste management activities.
• Adopt bylaws related to waste management.

2. Goals

The WMP outlines the following goals for New Plymouth District:

1. To protect the health of our communities by ensuring waste does not cause a nuisance or be injurious to health.
2. To lower the cost of waste and risk to society.
3. To reduce environmental damage from the generation and disposal of waste.
4. To increase economic benefit by using material resources more efficiently.
5. To ensure compliance with statutory requirements relating to waste management.
6. To achieve best practicable service for New Plymouth District through consultation, coordination and integration on waste management issues with other district councils in Taranaki and Taranaki Regional Council.
7. The WMP will be updated by 2012 in order to comply with the statutory requirements of the Waste Minimisation Act (2008).

3. Objectives

The plan outlines the following objectives for each key area. It also outlines policies and targets for achieving them. The objectives are:

3.1 Waste minimisation

To promote methods of waste management within the community that provide an alternative to disposal. To ensure the continued promotion and provision of recycling facilities through New Plymouth District.

Organic waste. To reduce the amount of organic waste disposed of to landfill.

Special waste. To dispose of special waste in an environmentally acceptable manner.

Construction and demolition. To redirect and utilise construction waste from the construction and demolition industry.

3.2 Hazardous waste

To implement effective hazardous waste management in an environmentally sustainable manner in line with central and regional government initiatives.

Contaminated sites. To remove unacceptable risk from contaminated sites where identified.

Organochlorines [1] To implement effective management of organochlorines in line with central government initiatives.

Trade waste. To ensure that public health and the environment are protected through the safe and cost effective disposal of domestic, commercial and industrial trade waste.

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3.3 Waste disposal

• To minimise residual waste disposed to land by providing a kerbside collection within urban built areas, combined with the collection of recyclable products.
• To promote and provide for methods of separating clean fill [2] from other wastes.
• To manage and operate existing refuse transfer stations and recycling centres in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner.
• To ensure the environmental disposal of residual solid waste is in accordance with guidelines prepared by the Ministry for the Environment.
• To ensure the wise use of existing resources by using New Plymouth, Inglewood and Okato landfill sites, upgraded as far as practicable to modern landfill standards and in compliance with resource consents, until they reach the end of their useful life.
• To manage the closure and reinstatement of closed sites to a state suitable for appropriate alternative land use.

3.4 General

• To ensure appropriate resources are available for the sustainable management of waste in the future.
• To work in consultation with the community.
• To use education as an integral part of the WMP.
• To ensure waste management activities are environmentally and economically sustainable.
• To measure the environmental effects of waste disposal upon the community of New Plymouth District.

4. Policies

The WMP contains practical policy statements about how the Council intends to implement the goals and objectives above. For further details see the full WMP, available at Council offices.

5. Waste minimisation

5.1 Waste avoidance and reduction

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Promote waste avoidance and reduction as part of the overall waste management strategy.
• Implement appropriate waste avoidance and reduction policies in all Council activities.
• Categorise waste accepted at the Council's landfills.
• Continue community education, as well as working with businesses and industry to encourage ways of avoiding and/or reducing the generation of waste, within available resources.
• Establish a register of all significant commercial and industrial waste producers within the district.
• Use charges on waste disposal to encourage waste minimisation in sectors of the community.
• Support the activities and programmes implemented by the regional waste minimisation officer, provided they are shown to remain effective.
• Consider the purchasing of recycled or recovered materials where appropriate or the funding of new initiatives which promote re-use or waste minimisation.

5.2 Recycling

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Continue to provide a weekly service for the collection of recycling placed at the kerbside for all urban communities within the district.
• Provide drop-off facilities for selected recyclable materials at all public transfer stations and landfills.
• Accept at nil charge the disposal of specified recyclable products at all public transfer stations and landfills.
• Provide educational resources to assist with the promotion of recycling as part of its overall waste minimisation strategy.
• Encourage charity-based and commercial recycling initiatives that are compatible with the overall integrated WMP.
• Continue its policy of user pays for all waste disposal services to encourage overall waste minimisation.
• Provide a recycling service to primary and secondary state registered schools within designated refuse collection areas to assist with reducing their volume of waste. Return to top

5.3 Organic waste

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Provide green waste and specified recycling services at all transfer stations and landfills.
• Facilitate a composting operation by private enterprise at the Colson Rd Landfill.
• Promote home composting through education.
• Encourage schools, businesses and other organisations to establish alternative methods for the disposal of organic waste, including composting systems.
• Ensure composting operations are undertaken in accordance with recognised good practice to avoid undue nuisance and unacceptable effects on the environment.
• Investigate the feasibility of opening transfer stations at specific times for the dropping off of compostable materials.
• Continue the composting and greenwaste separation occurring at the Council's Waitara, Tongaporutu, Inglewood and Okato transfer stations.

5.4 Special waste

• To provide disposal options for special wastes in the New Plymouth District, including an alternative facility (when appropriate) to landfilling.
• To continue to provide a drop-off facility for some special wastes at the Colson Rd Transfer Station.
• Support the 'tyre track scheme' implemented by central government.

5.5 Construction and demolition waste

• To direct construction and demolition waste away from landfill sites.
• To participate in a measurement programme to find out how much waste is being generated by the construction and demolition industry.
• To assist companies with information on the most appropriate method of recycling construction and demolition wastes.
• To continue community education and working with business and industry to encourage ways of avoiding and/or reducing the amount of construction and demolition waste disposed of to landfills.

5.6 Hazardous Wastes

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Continue regular liaison with Taranaki Regional Council on the development of appropriate strategies for the management and disposal of hazardous wastes from both the industrial/commercial sector and domestic households.
• Encourage local industry to cooperate with the Taranaki Regional Council to identify and quantify hazardous wastes produced in the district.
• Encourage and promote a reduction in the generation of hazardous wastes in the district.
• Maintain a policy of non-acceptance of hazardous waste at landfills.
• Provide for the disposal of domestic quantities of hazardous waste at the New Plymouth Transfer Station.
• Cooperate in the promotion of advice to the public on methods available for the disposal of hazardous wastes in larger volumes.
• Allocate an annual sum for the disposal of hazardous wastes collected.
• Educate the public on household hazardous wastes.
• Cooperate with central government, Taranaki Regional Council, other territorial authorities and industry to develop appropriate hazardous waste identification and exchange systems.
• Introduce bylaws to ensure policies are enforceable.

5.7 Contaminated sites

• To work in conjunction with Taranaki Regional Council and the region's other territorial authorities in reducing the risk to residents and the environment of contaminated areas identified as posing an unacceptable risk.
• To ensure mechanisms are in place to respond to any enquiry concerning contamination of sites within five working days. Return to top

5.8 Organochlorines

• To accept (from domestic customers) household or non-industrial organochlorines into the Hazardous Goods Store at the Colson Rd Landfill site.
• To educate and provide technical advice/support to the public of the options available for the safe and environmentally sustainable disposal of organochlorines.
• To cooperate with central government in the implementation of its organochlorines programme.
• To comply with Taranaki Regional Council's prohibition of deliberate burning of waste at district landfills.

5.9 Trade waste

• To maintain the district's sewage treatment facilities and infrastructure within defined levels of service, thereby ensuring that current or near future demands can be met.
• To keep up to date New Plymouth District Council's trade waste bylaw based on the model trade waste bylaw printed by Standards New Zealand.

6. Waste disposal

6.1 Refuse collection

New Plymouth District Council will continue to:

• Provide a weekly kerbside refuse collection of domestic refuse for all urban communities within the district.
• Provide a weekly roadside refuse collection and recycling service on main roads between urban collection areas.
• Accept only refuse in approved containers for collection.
• Encourage the collection of refuse from the industrial and commercial sectors by private commercial contracts.
• Continue a policy of user pays for the collection of excess domestic refuse, therefore encouraging households to limit their output for domestic kerbside collection to one approved container per week.
• Allow any private initiatives to provide for the separate collection of garden wastes.
• Provide environmentally sustainable waste disposal systems and facilities which are economically viable to the community.
• Continue community education and working with business and industry to encourage ways of avoiding and/or reducing the generation of waste, within available resources.
• Integrate the district's collection services with those of Stratford and South Taranaki district councils within a regional collection contract.

6.2 Clean fill disposal

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Actively encourage waste producers to separate clean fill from other wastes, including the application of financial incentives where appropriate.
• Provide separate storage areas for clean fill at the existing landfill sites and elsewhere, if appropriate, subject to obtaining consents, so that it can be used for land management purposes instead of being landfilled.
• Encourage the recording of the quantities of clean fill delivered to each municipal landfill site.
• Encourage the identification of sites in New Plymouth District that could be used for clean fill disposal in the future and provide for this activity in the District Plan (subject to any relevant resource consent processes).
• Actively promote the use of commercial clean fill sites for this waste to be beneficially used. Return to top

6.3 Transfer stations

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Encourage all local residents in the areas serviced by transfer stations to take their excess rubbish to the transfer stations.
• Provide facilities at the transfer stations, as appropriate, to receive separated wastes such as:
  - Garden waste;
  - Clean fill (in small quantities);
  - Recyclable materials such as paper, glass, aluminium, plastic and whiteware; in such a manner and under such terms as may be determined from time to time.

6.4 Colson Rd Landfill

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Establish and sustain a Class A landfill to provide a facility with the least environmental effect to the community.
• Ensure that the regional landfill at Colson Rd meets industry best practice for engineering, design, operation and monitoring.
• Be a good neighbour by continuing to facilitate regular liaison meetings with neighbours to the site.

6.5 Other municipal landfills

• New Plymouth District Council maintains two unused contingency landfills at Inglewood and Okato. Both landfills have been used in the past but are now reinstated and could be re-commissioned if needed in the future. The resource consents remain operative until 2020 and 2013 respectively.

6.6 Closed landfills

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Obtain any consents necessary relating to ongoing discharges from the sites and comply with any conditions of consents, and in particular those relating to monitoring.
• Ensure the sites are reinstated to the satisfaction of Taranaki Regional Council.
• Ensure that inappropriate land use activities are directed away from closed landfills by provisions in the District Plan.
• Place an encumbrance on the legal title of any council-owned land previously used for landfilling before it is sold.

7. General

7.1 Future refuse management alternatives

New Plymouth District Council will continue to:

• Review alternative technologies as appropriate, taking into account local and overseas initiatives.
• Rely on landfilling as the preferred method of refuse disposal until such time as a proven environmentally and economically comparable or better option is physically available to accept refuse.
• Use existing sites until they:
  : Reach their physical capacity to accept refuse in accordance with recognised good landfill management practice; or
  : Can no longer meet appropriate environmental standards; or
  : Become uneconomic or impracticable for other reasons determined by New Plymouth District Council.
• Maintain a watching brief with regard to possible future refuse disposal sites until such time as the remaining life of the existing sites necessitates the securing of a new site.
• Consider in terms of future landfilling options both within-region and beyond-region options for future waste management.

7.2 Community issues

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Continue to develop its waste management strategies, policies and bylaw in consultation with the community it serves.
• Consult with tangata whenua.
• Work with industry and commercial groups to establish appropriate waste minimisation goals.
• Liaise with central and regional government and other territorial authorities on the identification and development of appropriate hazardous waste management policies and procedures.
• Liaise with commercial and charitable organisations involved in recycling to maximise opportunities for increased effectiveness.
• Develop educational programmes to increase public awareness of the benefits of correct waste management.
• Support the work undertaken by the Regional Waste Minimisation Officer. Return to top

7.3 Education

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Work with other authorities in Taranaki to educate individuals and communities on issues of waste avoidance and reduction, recycling and composting.
• Participate in regional and national education campaigns as they arise and are found to be appropriate.
• Work with special interest groups to reach as broad a cross-section of the public as possible.

7.4 District Plan/Bylaws

New Plymouth District Council will:

• Develop refuse and solid waste bylaws in association with other territorial authorities and Standards New Zealand as a chapter of NZS 9201 Model Standard Bylaws.
• Encourage commercial and industrial waste producers to prepare a waste audit and annual management plan that records progress in the preceding year.
• Permit only domestic refuse in approved containers to be collected for disposal.
• Require the establishment of a register of all significant producers of commercial and industrial wastes in the district.
• Determine user charges.

8. Monitoring

8.1 Strategic objective

• To measure the environmental effects of waste disposal upon the community of New Plymouth District.

8.2 Policies

• To maintain a monthly record of the volumes of waste being disposed of and recycled at landfills and transfer stations throughout the district.
• To prepare an annual report on waste management actions and developments undertaken on a yearly basis.
• To gather other monitoring and measuring data from time to time to determine the effectiveness of policies and targets set out in this plan.
• To measure the amount of reyclable waste diverted against the residual waste stream.

 

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