Parul Sood: Auckland Council Deputy Director of Resilience and Infrastructure on e-waste in rubbish bins

Auckland Council's sounding the alarm over a spike in rubbish-truck fires this month. 

It says more and more risky batteries and battery-powered devices are being illegally dumped in bins. 

In December alone, nearly 600 laptops and more than 300 12-volt batteries ended up in Auckland’s regional recycling facility. 

Parul Sood, Auckland Council’s Deputy Director of Resilience and Infrastructure, told Andrew Dickens that the council website has a list of places you can take e-waste, and many retailers actually offer to take it back for free. 

She says it’s a community responsibility to do the right thing, so people just need to spend a little more time thinking before automatically tossing something in the rubbish bin. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, rubbish tracks are blowing up. Well, blowing up might
be an exaggeration, but there have been loads of fires
and rubbish and recycling trucks nine over the past little while.
On top of that at Ukhan's recycling facility that has
one or two small fires every single week. So Auckland
Council Deputy Director of Resilience and Infrastructure Paru Sued joins

(00:20):
me right now.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hello, Pero, good morning Andrew.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
What's blowing up?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Oh my god, it's all the wrong items that people
are putting into those trucks and they are predominantly lithemain
batteries that we've got so many of them in our
devices that are blowing up.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, so give us a list what's blown up? What's
the stuff we shouldn't be putting in the in the
rubbish truck.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
So one thing to clearly remember is what you should
be putting into your recycling bins. It is meant for
packaging only that comes out of your kitchen, laundry and
your bathrooms and of course paper that you might have
and actually nothing else. What people are doing, or I
guess they're doing it by mistake or some of them
are thinking, is wish cycling. They're actually putting in things

(01:05):
like batteries. They're also putting in canisters that might have
got some gas in it, or LPT bottles or even
being found in it that can very easily, once damished,
catch fire.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, so where should we put them? Like in December alone,
nearly six hundred laptops and over three hundred and twelve
vote batteries found their way into our recycling re facility,
which you just know that's bad. So where should those
people that put the laptops and batteries?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's right, And if you think of just you know,
visit Council's website. There is a whole list of places
where you can take them, and it's an easy search
that you can find them. But there are also retailers
that actually offer you can take them to those retailers
and they'll take it back for free. So Mighty ten
and Bunnings for example, have battery drop offs. There are
a lot of organizations that do e waste collections and

(01:54):
take back as well. We also have some community recycling
centers that take eway back. So I guess just a
little bit of research on where you can take it
near your house is what you need to do to
be able to get these materials to the right place
and disposed of correctly.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
So is there anything you can actually do to crack
down on the people who are either lazy or ignorant
to put this down or do you just have to
rely on community responsibility?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Hey, I think it's community responsibility is all on us
to actually do the right thing. We can look through
footage to see where it's come from. It's quite hard
to do that, but I think if we all just
think a little bit before we put that material in
the bin, I think that's the best way to go
because that's then preventing it from entering into the win
and we're not spending time wondering and policing it.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Pedal, Thank you so much for your time today produceud
from the organ Council. For more from earlier edition with
Ryan Bridge, listen live to news Talks it Be from
five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.