Western Bay of Plenty District Council is asking for feed-back on their proposal to introduce kerbside recycling. The Katikati – Waihi Beach Residents and Ratepayers Association think it is very important that we recycle as much of our rubbish as possible, but there are problems with council's proposals. The consultation document outlines three options for rubbish collection and kerbside recycling: Council does it all, council does the recycling but not the rubbish, or the current situation where we organise our own.

Our main concern is that council's preferred option is for them to get a contractor to do everything. Judging by past performance we suspect that would be a big multi-national with a single contract for the whole district (and probably including Tauranga). People will have to pay whether they use the recycling service or not. Even if initial price estimates appeared reasonable, the cost would rapidly increase once all the local companies have been put out of business.

Individual households will favour certain options depending on their circumstances. On balance we favour the status quo but suggest that we all try to recycle as much of our waste as we can.

Yours faithfully

K Hay, Katikati