Good 'rubbish’ prices sought

Press, 19 April 1979, Page 6

Good 'rubbish’ prices sought

Competitive purchase prices are being sought for recycled materials collected by the Christchurch City Council during the last five months of this year’s experimental recycling scheme. Tenders have been called for the purchase of used or clean cloth, non-ferrous metals, and newspapers. Since the scheme started seven months ago about 190! tonnes of materials, including glass, have been collected,.

When the neighbourhood collection area increased by half in March, the month’s volume of newspapers doubled. Collections of other materials remained about the same.

The recycling publicity officer (Mr R. Donald) said there had been no problem in collecting recyclable mat-

■ erials and ordinary rubbish 1 ■ on the same day, as had [ been tried in some places: • 54 per cent of households; • with a combined collection ■ had put out material for recycling. [ All four materials were • collected each Friday in one , area now and the response there had been about as 1 good as from the initial 4000 I households in the project. ■ But only about half the • homes in the Friday area had been visited by recycl-

ing officers before the experiment had started. “A personal visit beforehand makes a lot of difference.'’ said Mr Donald. Extra areas added to the original neighbourhoods in

the scheme had had fewer personal visits and were responding at about two-thirds [of the level elsewhere.