Waste collection may not be glamorous. However, it has its moments sometimes. In this post we describe three recent projects.

Leaky homes

The leaky buildings crisis caused grief for many home owners. It also resulted in several construction companies going out of business. However, with many dark clouds, there is often a silver lining. In this case, the crisis created work for businesses to fix the problem.

One of our largest companies specialises in recladding apartments and they work on complexes with as many as 50 apartments. As you can imagine, with a reclad, there is a huge amount of waste that needs to be removed. So, we were asked to lend a hand.

Most of the waste we collect goes to our recycling depot first. Transfer stations charge by weight, so the less we dump there the less it costs.

With this job, we wanted to recycle as much as possible. Most of the cladding was made from a plaster material with mesh in between. We could recycle the mesh, so the cladding was stockpiled at our depot and then crushed with a digger in order to get to it. Once the mesh and plaster was separated, the plaster was dumped at landfill along with materials like concrete.

Shifting asbestos

Asbestos was once a popular building material. However, we now know that it can cause cancer.

It’s important that experts are employed to remove it. We are not asbestos-removal experts; however, we do work closely experts when moving asbestos from a building.

Last year we were asked to remove asbestos from a hangar — a huge sea plane building — at Hobsonville Point. The job took about two months and we moved over 50 tonnes of asbestos in all.

Asbestos-removal experts wrapped the asbestos in 200-micron-thick polythene sheets before placing it in bins we supplied. We then transported the bins straight to the transfer station. Unlike other waste, we couldn’t just turn up; we had to warn the transfer station one hour in advance. To read more about asbestos removal, click here.

A rubbish protest

Last year we helped clean up rubbish illegally dumped in Mangere, Auckland. It appeared the rubbish was dumped as some sort of protest. It was out of this world — contractors were employed to manage the clean-up. Whenever a contractor wasn’t around, our drivers would see people start dumping more rubbish. In all, we removed about 10, 35m³ bins.

The rubbish comprised mainly light items such as couches and mattresses. This didn’t go down well with the transfer station because although most of the items were large, they were also light. As transfer stations charge on weight, they were unable to make as much of the rubbish as they would have liked.

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