Straight from city council A personal view, by Councillor Steve Morris

Did you know that more than 70 truck and trailer loads full of rubbish travel over the Kaimai Range every week from Tauranga to landfill in the Waikato? That's about 90,000 tonnes per year.

Tauranga City Council recently sorted through 14 tonnes of kerbside rubbish this summer and found that up to 70 per cent of Tauranga's rubbish could be recycled or composted but isn't – up from 65 per cent in 2013.

In my view, this isn't residents' fault because we don't provide you with an effective recycling service. If you're a new resident, you were no doubt surprised to learn that TCC doesn't provide a kerbside recycling service and we don't provide a rubbish wheelie bin either.

Instead residents are expected to organise their own private rubbish provider; that's why you see a caravan of seven rubbish trucks driving around every rubbish day, each duplicating machinery, fuel, and staff.

The private sector approach to rubbish collection may have worked when we were a town but it's now clear it's failing our environment and our growing city is falling behind the rest of New Zealand. Tauranga bin providers don't allow recycling of numbers 3-7 plastics and the private recycling plant has put the price of processing glass up, which will no doubt show on your next bin invoice.

We also surveyed 900 residents and found the average spend on rubbish was $329 per year so there are value for money issues too. Things need to change. Further rubbish surveys are planned this autumn and winter and if the results are confirmed council will need to look at a new approach for the city.