Entrance to the Waikanae facility in Park Avenue.

by John Robinson

The Kapiti Coast District Council’s Long Term Plan reeks of hypocrisy.  They make claims to be green, to be concerned with the environment.  They say, in their expensive, long-winded glossy community PR exercise – the consultation document, “Securing our future” – that “Minimising waste helps reduce emissions, use resources efficiently and protect our environment, so it’s a high priority for us”, and that they want to “spend more time … helping people work out ways they can reduce waste, reuse and recycle.”

Like many of us, our household has been doing that all our lives.  We keep waste to a minimum.  We have a couple of compost bins.  We take recycling waste to the Waikanae green waste and recycling site, every four or five weeks.  We do not need to use the kerbside recycling services, with their large and noisy trucks, with the large bins that encourage large quantities of waste, and the added costs involved. 

A glossy photo has the caption: “We are expanding our waste minimisation initiatives to support the community and businesses to keep waste out of landfill.”  That is a bareface lie as the actions are very opposite.  They are removing support, not providing better support; destroying initiative, not helping people to work out ways to do better.

The council wants to force us from self-sufficiency to the wasteful commercial service.  “Most users of this recycling station (the Waikanae green waste and recycling site) also have kerbside recycling services, so we’re proposing to close this site from 1 August 2021.”  The aim is to close down a useful service, to drive us to pay for the wasteful commercial system, and to destroy our efforts to minimise our waste and to take care of ourselves – the exact opposite of their empty talk.