Whatever you have heard about a 4-bin system is probably wrong.

This is the message from Tauranga City Council following a story published on SunLive about a review of the city's rubbish collection.

There has been a fair bit of discussion recently about the city's waste problem and what Tauranga City Council is proposing to do about it.

'Some waste contractors have made incorrect assumptions in their advertising and in media interviews. Those wrong assumptions are now starting to show up in submissions that people have made to the Council's draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan,” says a statement from Tauranga City Council.

'To be very clear, there is no 4-bin kerbside system proposed in Tauranga City Council's draft waste plan. The draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan proposes that the Council should investigate ways to divert more residential waste from landfill. No decision has been made about what the solution would actually look like.”

If the draft plan is adopted, this waste problem will become the subject of an investigation over the next 12 – 18 months, funded by a central government waste levy.

One of the things proposed to be investigated is a rates-funded kerbside collection service that would divert more residential waste from landfill.

That investigation might or might not lead the Council to consider implementing a partly or wholly rates-funded service in a few years' time. If so, the details of how such a service might function, and what it would look like, would need a lot more development and then it would be opened to further public consultation, says Rebecca Maiden, manager: resource, recovery and waste.

'We're asking people who care about the future of the city to read about the waste problem and let us know if they agree whether the Council should consider taking a more proactive role in addressing the problem.”

Rebecca says council staff have been in ongoing dialogue with the city's waste contractors during the development of the draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan.

'Some of the contractors have obviously based their current assumptions on scenario modelling that they saw in earlier Council reports. None of those models are actually in the draft Waste Plan. There is no 4-bin system currently proposed.”

If, after reading this, you feel like the submission you have already made doesn't quite represent how you feel about this issue, then you are welcome to make a second submission, says Rebecca.

You do need to be clear if you want your previous submission to be ignored or revoked, otherwise Council will formally take both into account.

Submissions on Tauranga's Draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan close on July 14. Submissions can be made by visiting Waste problem