Imagine my surprise last week when out of the blue I received an email from the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance about the food scrap bin programme initiated by Auckland council in July 2023.
I still remember the evening when my unsolicited little green plastic bucket turned up beside my letter box. “Don’t remember ordering that,” I thought to myself as I looked at it in the dim light of an overhead street lamp and wondered where it had come from.
I picked up my little green bucket, took it inside, popped it on the kitchen table and then saw “Auckland Council Food Scraps” emblazoned on the front. I remember my jaw dropping immediately and thinking to myself, “Oh no, not another unasked for and unwanted virtue signalling piece of junk that will cost us more than its worth! Who asks them to do this shit?”
I tentatively lifted the lid to find another smaller bucket inside along with a couple of pamphlets and a letter from the council:
“Dear Resident,” it proclaimed in dark bold print, “we’re pleased to deliver you a new food scraps bin for Auckland’s collection service. We’re aiming for zero waste by 2040 and keeping your food scraps out of the rubbish is a real way you can help.” Read on if you choose:
Anyway, I had no use for the little green bin so it has sat beside the garbage and recycling bins (therein lies another story) by the fence ever since. Sitting inside it are the original pamphlets and letter and the smaller second bucket, right where they all were on delivery night 2023.
I tried to find out whose idea this all was, but the most information I was able to glean, without wasting more time than I felt the matter was worth, is that like it or lump it, participate in it or not, I was going to be charged 70-some dollars each year in addition to my regular rates, along with everybody else.
I don’t recall a major clamouring from ratepayers for such a service: in fact, it was the first I heard of it when the little bucket arrived. I was astounded at the waste of time, money and energy at the time, and I am so even more now with the details provided by the Ratepayers’ Alliance:
“Each year the Food Scrap Bin programme costs more than $36 million, or about $77 per household – despite only 35 per cent of Aucklanders actually using them.”
But it gets even worse...
· The plastic bins were made and shipped from Australia, costing $15 million, or roughly $30 per bin.
· The pink bin liners are made in and shipped from China.
· The food scraps are collected by trucks and shipped 200km to a processing plant in Reporoa, near Taupo.
Who in their right minds in council ever thought this was a good idea and who the hell asked them to even contemplate it? Who had it as part of their election manifesto?
The Ratepayers’ Alliance is at great pains to point out that it’s a waste of money because:
When someone sets out to reduce carbon at a lower cost than the current carbon price, it’s a good option, that’s the whole point of the ETS.
But when it costs more than the carbon price – you should instead just buy credits and let others use that money to reduce CO₂ more cost-effectively!
Fair enough point, except for one thing: The ETS is itself one of the biggest cons in the history of mankind stacked up neatly behind the Covid scam and the Covid vaccines and totally reliant on the climate scam, which, anybody with functional brain cells knows by now, was a completely baseless and unscientific premise in the first place.
Let’s stop the nonsense once and for all. There’s nothing we need to do about ETS or carbon at all. The planet needs CO2 and the amounts have fluctuated higher and lower than today many times over millions of years.
Let Wayne Brown know how you feel about this, folks. Many Aucklanders gave him their votes to eliminate just this kind of ‘garbage’, if you’ll pardon the pun!
