Environmental and economic pressures are pushing Tauranga City Council to look at ways of reducing the amount of rubbish being sent to landfill.

Every day there is nearly 400 tonnes of Tauranga rubbish trucked over the Kaimai Range to Waikato landfills.

Every tonne costs the Tauranga City Council $10, paid into a government levy. Tauranga ratepayers are paying the cartage, tip fees and emissions taxes through the prices paid to the rubbish contractors.

Over half of what's being taken to landfill could be reused, recycled or composted, according to analysis done by the council six years ago.

The council is now legally obliged to reassess its waste minimisation plan, something it has to do every six years.

Tauranga City Council's Draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan signals the council's intent to investigate, over the next 12-18 months, a rates-funded solution that will divert more waste from landfill.

Basically the waste plan needs to be written, consulted on and adopted by September. In accordance with the legislation says the council resource, recovery and waste manager Rebecca Maiden.

'The draft plan proposes council investigate some options to see if there is a better way,” says Rebecca.

'We don't yet know exactly what a rates-funded solution would look like, or how it would work. We do know that the current system is not enabling everyone in the community to divert as much as possible from landfill, as easily as possible.

'Having this included in the draft plan will mean the investigation can be funded with the central government waste levy, rather than with rates.”

At present there are so many companies offering different structures the individuals don't benefit from the economies of scale that could be available if the service was operated in a different way.

'So that's part of what we are looking at moving forward. We haven't done all that legwork yet just because of the timing needed to get the plan adopted,” says Rebecca.

There is also a whole other process that would have to be gone through if anything was to change, either through the next long term plan or by a plan amendment, says Rebecca.

'So the reason why we haven't gone out to consult on any hard facts and data in terms of what a new service might look like and what it would potentially cost, is just the timing.

'The constraints in terms of time in terms of getting that together and being able to consult with the community in a way that gives them time absorb the information and have that conversation.

'So the benefit of doing it in this way we are able to use the waste levy fund, that we all pay, to fund some of those investigations to work out what the best solution is.”

As soon as the plan is adopted, they council will be able to use the government fund to pay for the surveys and investigations required to update the rubbish data from kerbside to transfer station and taking into account the business and construction waste and presenting an economic analysis of different alternatives.

'Then we will go out and have that conversation with the community, so we have quite a way to go,” says Rebecca.