A city wide council funded glass collection service is expected to be underway in October this year.

Tauranga City councillors approved the funding for the service in the Long term plan deliberations this week.

Councillors agreed to include an additional $1,038,000 in the 2018/19 financial year, and $1,163,000 in both the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial years.

Authority will be delegated to the chief executive to finalise arrangements, with a supplier to provide a service prior to the formal LTP adoption on June 28.

The move is in response to Waste Management NZ refusing to accept mixed glass at its facility at Te Maunga.

The decision affects all private waste service providers offering a recycling service, and leaves about 6000 tonnes of glass to be managed each year by individual households.

'If Council is not seen to be taking any action in response to this private sector decision, there are likely to be negative environmental and reputational impacts,” says the city council's resource recovery and waste manager Rebecca Maiden.

'The consequence of more glass in the landfill is contrary to the vision and underlying principle of the Waste Minimisation and Management Plan, being to ‘minimising waste to landfill'.”

The next steps are to complete the procurement process to engage suppliers to undertake the collection of colour-sorted glass from the kerbside, supply crates and supply RFID tags.

Develop communications campaign to support the introduction of the service and ensure internal processes are established to so properties, are correctly rated for the service and data from RFID tags is stored for future planning.

SLR Consultants check the staff estimates of transport costs, sale of glass and processing and handling costs, and are comfortable with the estimate of $1.1 million per annum cost of service, says Rebecca.

City council staff applied to the Packaging Forums contestable fund for 25 per cent of the cost of the crates.

Staff also applied to the Ministry for the Environment contestable waste minimisation fund for 50 per cent of the cost of the crates.

A tender was called for a colour sorted glass collection service on April 30, with tenders closed on May 21.

There is general ratepayer support for the council to take over the service with 65.47 per cent of LTP submitters supporting rates funded kerbside collections, says Rebecca.

Community feedback reveals many people cancelled their recycling service with private companies, saying glass makes up most of what they recycle.

The average person has a 240 litre recycling bin emptied fortnightly and glass makes up 20 per cent or more of the volume. This equates to about 48 litres of glass per fortnight.

The council is proposing a 45 litre crate, collected fortnightly.

'This reduces the risk of over flowing bins. Overflowing bins will not be collected due to health and safety reasons, these would be a hazard for collectors as well as the public,” says Rebecca.

'A monthly service would not halve the price. The contents and presentation rates of the crates would be higher, and it is likely that households will request additional crates. This effects the efficiency of the service by slowing it down, due to more output, and the timing of the rounds.”