On Monday State Highway 29 between Tauranga and Matamata was closed for about three hours while the road was cleared after a rubbish truck flipped when its trailer tipped.

The truck left the road in the Kaimai Ranges, taking a chunk out of a bank before its trailer flipped and spilled waste over the road.

The truck was taking waste to Hampton Downs in Hamilton when the trailer tipped on its side on the Omanawa River Bridge, so far it is uncertain why this happened.

Find out more: http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10578676

On July 1st a new act that came into effect, aimed at getting people in the Manawatu to recycle more. The Waste Management and Minimisation Act would leave the floor open for local community to come up with innovative recycling and waste reduction ideas.

Under the act, councils or residents who take rubbish to a landfill will be charged $10 per ton of rubbish on top of the regular dumping fee, meaning every $10 collected, $3.77 will be returned to the council. From that $3.77, the council can hold on to 50% with the other $1.89 going into a nationwide contestable fund.

District and regional councils can then apply for money from the fund and will be granted it if they can prove they have an innovative idea that will help reduce waste, this is encouraging for entrepreneurs with competitive ideas.

The council will be competing against other councils for funding so ideas would have to be sharp. Get your creative juices flowing and come up with some great ideas, try visiting:

http://www.reducerubbish.govt.nz/regional-pages/manawatu-wanganui.html

…before you order your skip bin at www.bookabin.co.nz consider the following:

If your household fills one large wheelie bin per week (equivalent to 5 bags of rubbish) you probably throw away enough:

• Kitchen scraps and garden waste in a year to make almost one and a half trailer loads of compost
• Paper and cardboard in a year to make a stack of magazines 40 metres high
• Recyclable plastic in a year to fill at least 25 wheelbarrows

In New Zealand, all of our rubbish is buried in landfill sites. The problem is that we don’t have enough existing landfills to cope with the increasing amount of rubbish we’re throwing away. While we need landfills to manage some of our rubbish, over half of the rubbish we put in our rubbish bags can be recycled or composted - the more recycling and composting we all do, the less we will need landfills to provide a ‘final’ solution to rubbish.

Tip #1: Putting your kitchen scraps down the waste disposal unit doesn’t make them go away - all you’re doing is shifting the disposal problem to someone else. Try to compost your scraps instead.

Tip #2: Burning rubbish isn’t a solution - it pollutes the air and may release toxic substances. Composting and recycling are healthier options for you, your neighbours and the environment.

While landfills effectively contain our rubbish, did you know that:

• Rubbish doesn’t break down very well in a landfill. Plastic, steel, aluminum and even paper and cardboard take tens or hundreds of years to break down
• As garden rubbish and kitchen scraps break down in a landfill they produce methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas (20 times worse than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas) and can reach explosive concentrations in enclosed spaces such as basements
• Rainwater percolating through the landfill and the breakdown of garden rubbish and kitchen scraps contribute to a liquid called leachate. In old landfills, leachate can escape and contaminate surface and groundwater. In modern, well-managed landfills it costs a lot of money to collect and treat the leachate
• While modern landfills don’t tend to cause dust or odor problems, nobody wants to live near one

In the end it’s our actions that will decide the issue. We can each make a difference by taking some easy steps to reduce our rubbish.

(Information above sourced from www.reducerubbish.govt.nz check out this website for more useful information!)