Fees paid at the gate enable our contractor to keep the Lincoln Street Resource Recovery Centre and Hamilton Organic Centre operating. Read more about the Government's Waste Levy increases and the full list of charges at both resource recovery centres.
Batteries from toys, cars, scooters, vapes, vacuum cleaners and appliances are stripped for metal and any liquid is sustainably disposed of.
Clean whiteware such as dryers, washing machines, fridges and freezers are stripped for metal and parts.
E-waste including TVs, computer monitors, hard drives, DVD players, toasters, etc are collected by Computer Recycling and sorted into two categories: reuse or recycle. Technicians refurbish and re-market what can be salvaged and anything not able to be refurbished is dismantled for parts.
Clean recycling such as plastics labelled 1, 2 and 5, aluminium, tin, paper and cardboard is sent for sorting and recycled into different products. Only plastics with a number 1, 2 and 5 are recyclable in New Zealand.
Plastic bottle top lids are sent to a repurposing plant and made into new products. Lids can fall through the conveyor belt during processing and cause damage to the sorting machines. We encourage people not to add them to kerbside bins. People can dispose of them for free at the Lincoln Street Resource Recovery Centre, where they will be collected and manually added to the recycling sorting process.
Metal lids from jars and wine and beer bottles are melted and repurposed.
Household hazardous waste such as paint, drain or oven cleaner, oil, pesticides and pool cleaners will be disposed of safely and sustainably. Please do not place these items into the rubbish and never pour them down the drain.
The Lincoln Street Habitat for Humanity Re-use Store takes selected items in working order and good condition, which can be dropped off for free and on-sold.
The fees for some building waste is reduced to support the separation and reuse of some of these materials, such as green waste, treated and untreated wood, concrete and cleanfill (soil).
Green Waste is sent to Hampton Downs Landfill, where it is added to kerbside food scraps and broken down in the composting facility into Tronpost (the same as compost, but local).
Concrete is processed in a concrete crusher and recycled into drainage and roading material, and builders mix.
Cleanfill is used for fill on construction sites.
Timber is sent to a facility in Auckland where nails, screws and other metals are separated. Timber is then sorted and fed into a large processing machine called The Beast. The Beast turns scrap timber (400,000kg an hour) into wood chips and is also used by a cement company as biofuel.
