A kerbside collection started by council nearly two years ago to make the city's waste disposal more environmentally-friendly has seen thousands of used bins from the last service still piled up at Truman lane.

A Tauranga resident who drives along Truman Lane twice-a-day, reached out to The Sun after being sick of seeing the sea of plastic bins for all this time.

'I drive past them every day and it pisses me off…I could never see the need for them [council] to put so many small operators out of business and just to have all those bins sitting there year after year is unacceptable,” says the resident who wishes to remain anonymous.

'There's just a whole compound of them…that's a mountain of plastic going nowhere at the moment. The council taking over everything was to make it more environmental.”

The new Tauranga City Council-managed rates-funded kerbside collection started July 2021. Now, nearly two years on, a hoard of used plastic bins remain piled at Te Maunga Transfer Station.

The stockpile of discarded bins are predominantly Waste Management bins that were collected and replaced with council-provided options in mid-2021.

Tauranga City Council's sustainability and waste manager Dan Smith says the bins on Truman Lane are Waste Management bins 'that weren't in a good enough condition for other customers around New Zealand to use after council introduced the new kerbside collections”.

He says these bins will be chipped-up at Te Maunga and recycled into new bins. While the number of bins was not made clear, Dan says: 'So far, half of the original bins have been recycled, with the remaining half still to go, and they're being processed at about 500 a week currently”.

Chipping began April 2022.

Locally owned and operated collection service Kleana Bins owner John Cruickshank says some of the bins at the Te Maunga Station are Kleana Bins.

'The people that Waste Management employed to collect the bins were a bit rough and ready and they did grab a few of ours that they weren't supposed to touch…we lost a few wheelie bins out of that.”

Dan says there may be a small amount of Kleana Bins wheelie bins that were mistakenly picked up during the return process due to human error.

'After working on recycling the bins so far, Waste Management estimates this would be no more than a handful. Waste Management would be happy to help return these bins to Kleana Bins if they'd like to have them back.”

As for the land the bins remain piled on, John says he can understand why residents would be irked. 'I don't know who owns that bit of dirt...but I'm guessing either council are paying rent to whoever owns it, or if it's a council piece of land, then they could be charging someone else rent for it.

'One way or the other, it's a waste of ratepayers' money.”

Dan says: 'The bins are owned by Waste Management and stored on Crown land.”