A message on the DW Facebook page is below:

No, it’s not the badly needed independent efficiency auditor, alas.

“KCDC has just appointed Jenny Carter to a newly formed Waste Advisor role, and her main responsibility will be to provide free, in-home waste minimisation and rubbish disposal advice and support to Kāpiti residents.

“Jenny has also been invited by the industry body, WasteMINZ, to be one of two representatives for New Zealand Councils on a cross sector working group around the issues with compostable/recyclable bags, which is a reflection of Jenny’s expertise in this area. Other representative on this group are from the packaging industries, supermarkets and the composting industry — cross your fingers the packaging people listen!

“There will also be a trial ‘pay as you go” rubbish collection service by Low Cost Bins

“After all the discussion about why customers who only produce tiny amounts of rubbish per week should have to pay for a weekly service, Low Cost Bins are trialling a ‘pay as you go’ rubbish collection service with 100 customers, over three months starting 1 July 2018. This trial won’t affect residents recycling collections, which will continue as normal. Low Cost Bins will then carry out analysis of the trial collection period and if the trial shows that it’s a viable option, they’ll look at the option of launching a pay per empty model early in 2019.”

“(Waste Management do offer a ‘pay as you go’ rubbish collection service, which is currently only for the 240L rubbish bins, but say it could be expanded to other bin sizes. Recycling collections for the ‘pay as you go’ system continue as normal with them too.”

Illegal dumping

“One thing we were all worried about when the yellow bags were discontinued was illegal dumping – however KCDC’s operations and waste minimisation teams say that the amount of general litter and illegally dumped rubbish is on par with previous years, and hasn’t dramatically increased since the changes came into effect.

“There will always be trouble spots (we saw three bags supermarket bags of domestic rubbish at the entrance to the Nikau Walk yesterday (not even inside the empty rubbish bin….), so we’ll continue to let KCDC know when we find these.”