Inside community recycling: How handy people make things out of rubbish

Saturday, 14 September 2019

Locals use recycled wood to make furniture at the Devonport Community Recycling Centre.

At a former landfill, a handful of handy people are hard at work finding new uses for other people's waste.

Visiting children have made a go kart in the past out of old wheels and tubing, but on today's agenda is making tables and chairs from used wood.

Here, a recycling bin is no longer a recycling bin — it has a new life as a chair.

Occupying it is Andrew Walters, who runs the Devonport Community Recycling Centre on Auckland's North Shore alongside his wife, Jane.

* Auckland food waste collection service roll out delayed by a year

* Aucklanders' bad recycling habits see 32,000 tonnes of rubbish sent to landfill over two years**

He says the centre is all about 'reimagining waste' and 'lighting that spark' about upcycling in people.

Andrew Walters stops for a coffee break in a re-purposed recycling bin at the community recycling centre.

Community workshops which saw waste wood upcycled into furniture showed waste was a resource and could have a second life or more, Walters says.

The centre receives about 5500 tonnes of waste per year, 80 per cent of which was diverted from landfill.

Waste wood makes up about 1500 tonnes per year.

The Devonport community recycling centre is among eight operating across the region.

The other community recycling centres are located on Great Barrier Island, in Helensville, Henderson, Snells Beach in Warkworth, Waiuku, Wellsford and Whangaparāoa.

Communities in Snells Beach and Wellsford saw their centres open in the last seven weeks.

The centres accept building materials such as bricks and timber, green waste, recyclable materials like cardboard, reusable goods such as appliances and tools, general rubbish, and household and commercial recycling.

Local Murray Alker building tables and chairs from wood for an upcoming waste management conference.

Scrap steel, whiteware and fridges also make the community recycling cut.

However, the centres are not capable of taking asbestos, hazardous or odorous waste, veterinary or medical waste and liquid waste.

Between them, an average of 337 tonnes of recyclable materials are diverted from landfill per month.

One of Walter's workers, Pauscal Durrant, who goes by the nickname Bob, was a pawn broker for 14 years before he joined the recycling centre.

The 62-year-old, who says he has a sense of being the 'father of the future', says the centre's work is 'groundbreaking'.

'This is the way things will be going across the world in a few years. You can't just go on throwing things into holes in the ground – like an ostrich burying your head in the sand.'

Durrant says he comes across a 'treasure trove' of other people's waste on a daily basis and is surprised furniture in fairly good nick is dropped off.

Pauscal 'Bob' Durrant has worked at the community recycling centre in Devonport for about a year.

Most of the time all it needs is to be sanded or have a leg stuck back on, he says.

'It's about getting the chance to re-use it, recycle it.'

Durrant says the odd cantankerous person is all part of the job and he enjoys the 'varied' work — he doesn't just run the reuse shop.

'The job is rewarding, doing something not just for myself but for everybody.'

Andrew Walters sorts through used wood at the Devonport Community Recycling Centre.

The centres each have a set of social or environmental outcomes it wants to achieve.

For Devonport, this is waste action — recover it, reuse it, repair it, recycle it, refill it and keep it out of landfill.

The centres have created more than 50 full- and part-time jobs across the region. At the Devonport centre alone, 11 people are employed and are paid the living wage.

Innovation is also at the centres' hearts.

Devonport compacts styrofoam and polystyrene and sends it to another community-based recycling venture, Abilities.

After sending garden waste off-site for reprocessing, the centre then sells compost, mulch and wood chips to the community.

Waiuku has a tool library and works closely with the local Men's Shed.

In Warkworth/Wellsford, the centre works closely with local op shops, sending them any recovered bric-a-brac and clothing.

Auckland Council's goal is to establish four more community recycling centres by 2024. It says it is well on target to achieve or possibly exceed this target as part of its plans for the region to be zero waste by 2040.

Centres are planned for Onehunga, south Auckland, Waiheke Island and Western Springs over the next two years – although a society of gardeners is refusing to move from its headquarters to make way for that centre.

'They're the way of the future because what we're looking at doing is turning from the old days of where you take, make, use and waste to make, use, reuse, recycle, refurbish so we're not literally a wasteful society,' Mayor Phil Goff says.

'The days of landfill we hope are numbered.'