Residents can take their glass and sort it themselves for recycling at the Spicer Landfill. Photo: Supplied
Porirua residents once put out their bottles and jars out for recycling knowing they would go toward making new containers, but these days it is all going to use at the local landfill instead.
Currently glass is crushed and used in roading and drainage at the tip - rather than living to see another day.
It is because the city cannot afford a sorting machine and so coloured glass would have to be sorted at the kerbside - which is expensive.
Porirua City Council General Manger of Infrastructure Mike Medonca told Checkpoint the changes are due to a contract ending with a previous provider.
"So right now we collect the glass at the kerbside, we give it to a third party - in the past that third party would send it to Auckland, where it was sorted and recycled into glass bottles and jars, but when that contract finished we found out that option wasn't available to us.
"What we've done is we've taken the glass, we crush it up, we use it for drainage and for roading in and around our landfill.
"We think it's not fantastic and we'd much rather be properly recycling the glass which is why we are proposing these changes."
What the council is proposing is changing to smaller crates for recycling glass - from 40 litres to 20 - and having recycling workers sort glass by colour into different pods on the recycling truck.
"Once the guys have done that, the glass doesn't need to be touched again until it's turned into a bottle up in Auckland.
"It's a great recycling story that we could have, the only problem is it's going to cost us a bit more to do that."
The changes are being proposed as part of Porirua Council's Long-Term Plan that is now out for public consultation until 25 April.
"We're currently asking the community what they think."
Sorting coloured glass once could happen in Auckland, but the value of recycled glass has dropped and made it financially unfeasible to transport the unsorted glass.
"Once upon a time recycled glass was worth a lot of money, and the price of that glass covered the cost of sorting it out.
"Unfortunately the price of glass has greatly diminished and now we're finding we're having to think about different ways to get the coloured sorting done and the best way to do it, we've found, is to do it at the kerbside."
However, the consultation and set-up time mean that there could be up to a five-year-gap since the old contract ended in 2022 until a new glass sorting system comes into place.
Porirua ratepayers can, in the meantime, take their glass to the Spicer Landfill facility where people can sort their glass themselves, "if they're really dedicated," Medonca said.
He said the council would continue to take glass and repurpose it locally, however.
"We will continue to collect it and use it best we can."
