Waste Management » Sift Blog

Yesterday, the Sift team visited Kate Valley Landfill. As part of the Waste Minimisation Conference being held here in Christchurch  we were able to tag along and see for ourselves where our waste is going. Makes you want to buy  a lot less, consume more consciously and compost everything you can. We have also decided to rename our landfill rubbish bin to Kate Valley Landfill so we remember exactly where that piece of waste will end up.

Kate Valley looking towards Tiromoan Reserve

Kate Valley itself is a beautiful scenic part of Canterbury about an hour north of Christchurch. The landfill itself is surprisingly clean and a very slick operation. It is not the stereotypical landfill with piles of trash, an awful smell and lots of seagulls. In fact you only see the rubbish that has just come out of the trucks for that day – the rest is covered over and there are no seagulls. Even with being so close to the coast because the waste is not left out uncovered there are no seagulls to pick at it. There is a slight smell but nothing to make you gag or hold your nose. We were actually quite impressed with the whole operation.

Completed landfill Cell 1 on the right, Beech Remnant in the middle and current landfill cell on the left

For Christchurch a total of 253,985 tonnes of waste went to landfill (both Christchurch City Council and privately managed landfills) for the 12 months ending 30 June 2007. That’s about 764kg per person per year. The majority of the waste is paper and cardboard (21%) which could have been recycled, kitchen waste 16%, plastic waste 15% (some of this no doubt could have been recycled and if not we need to find other ways to divert it from landfill without it going offshore), Green waste 11% (possibly mostly compostable), wood 10%, textiles and rubber 9% and rubble 7%. The remaining 11% is glass, metal, potentially hazardous substances, sanitary paper and soil.*

The top contenders for being reduced so they don’t go to landfill are paper/cardboard, plastics, organic waste, wood and textiles. If you have any ideas on what more we can do to decrease the amount of this waste going to landfill feel free to let us know.

The Kate Valley Landfill site looking South-East

Here are some facts about Kate Valley landfill that you may not have know:

• Kate Valley landfill is a collaborative regional landfill between Christchurch City Council and Selwyn, Hurunui, Waimakariri and Ashburton District Councils (there are other private landfills and cleanfills in Canterbury). It is owned 50% by Transwaste Canterbury and 50% by all the councils involved. A great example of a successful private-public partnership.
• The site is about 1000 hectares with only 37ha set aside for landfill and 410ha for environmental enhancement. The rest is being farmed.
• There is currently 1.2million tonnes of waste in the landfill (after about 4 years of operation) and the landfill is expected to last 35 years.
• The landfill has many innovative design components including a super high quality base-lining system, the restoration of 410ha of threatened native bush being restored back to native coastal bush (a process that will take a couple of hundred years), two public walkways (Mt Cass and Tiromoana Bush Restoration area)  and educational opportunities for the community (how many landfills have bus tours! They are booked 6 months in advance too).
• Leachate from the landfill is pumped through collection drains and stored in tanks with the excess being taken to Bromley Sewage Treatment Plant in Christchurch.
• It is expected that in about 30 years there will be enough gas collected to potentially generate 8 megawatts, enough to power 8000 households.
• All rubbish trucks are tracked with GPS and are told by a centralised dispatcher where the rubbish is for pick up each day. The rubbish trucks never actually go to the landfill site itself. There is a highly organised process of dropping off the full containers and picking up an empty one and leaving. Taking the full containers to the landfill for emptying is done by four tipper trucks. This keeps the process very safe and clean.
• Transwaste Canterbury can landfill a day’s worth of rubbish in just four hours.
• Transwaste Canterbury and CWS (who manage the trucks) carry out school education programmes for the local schools in the area so the children learn about how to be safe around the trucks. The trucks also drop down to 40km p/hour around these local schools (some of which are on 100km p/hour stretches of State Highway 1).
• The CWS trucks do four trips a day with a three hour round trip for each trip and all the trucks have a number of cameras for safety.
• There has been a noticeable reduction in waste mostly because of Christchurch’s new three-bin waste system and the recession (people are consuming less so there is less waste).
• In the middle of the landfill site is a small area of old beech forest. Transwaste Canterbury have been asked to not remove this area until a certain date so the DNA from the seeds of the beech trees can be taken and used for new seedlings in the restoration area further down the valley.
• Transwaste Canterbury plant 40,000 trees a year and have created a wetlands area.

Truck Unloading Source: Hurunui District Council

If you want to see what happens to your organic and recyclable waste there are open days this Sunday from 10am to 3pm at the Waste Water Treatment Plant in Bromley, the Organics Plant, also in Bromley and the Recycling Plant in Parkhouse Road in Sockburn. For more information on entrance fees and parking etc click the links or visit the City Council’s website.

*Statistics from the Solid Waste and Recycling Statistics for Christchurch April 2008.

National waste information can be found here from the MfE.

For more information about your rubbish recovery and Kate Valley Landfill talk to your local District or City Council.