Its now 6 months into the assignment and I am back in New Zealand to take a well earned breather. We have achieved a fair bit since June as seen from this brief summary. Photos to be uploaded later.
- Regular bulldozing of waste at the town dump to keep things under control and organised onsite.
- New signage onsite explaining new opening hours, waste disposal costs, guidelines for site users. The previous signage indicated that the site was open 7 days a week when it was actually only open 5.5 days a week at most. We tightened up the opening hours so that the site would be open and manned at the specified times, thus reducing illegal dumping outside the site gate and surrounding area and reducing frustration of site users arriving at the site and it not being open.
- A total fire ban onsite (with exceptions for biosecurity and hospital waste). With a plan in place for a biosecurity quarantine waste incinerator to be installed early 2014 at an isolated part of the site.
- Cardboard recycling storage area built, with plans for a scrap metal storage area in 2014.
- An increase in waste disposal costs in October. This allowed us to begin to afford the various maintenance and upgrade works onsite and may help us with other waste management initiatives.
- The site gatekeeper has been trained up on what is acceptable behaviour for site users and has been given responsibility to use common sense when dealing with the public. He also roughly characterises the waste as it comes in and controls the takings, taking note of each load.
- A new site office has been built to replace the hovel that greeted site users when they previously arrvied onsite. An overall better impression is now made when entering the site which might encourage users to follow site guidelines on disposal of waste. If we look like we give a damn then maybe site users might follow our lead.
- A waste management account has been set up within the municipal council. 50% of income earned from the waste disposal site, business house waste collection fees, etc., will be lodged in the account and invested in waste management projects around Luganville. The remaining 50% will be used for general council expenses. The waste management account spending will be published in the newspaper on a quarterly basis to encourage transparency and discourage unapproved spending.
- A new waste management by-law was written and passed into law. This replaced the previous by-law which was badly written.
- We have started dealing with the illegal dumping problem around Luganville. We have put up signs threatening fines and we will increase litter warden patrols at dumping hotspots. There will be a major cleanup in one of the illegal dumping areas on the first weekend of December. Anyone caught dumping there after this will be dealt with.
- We are in the process of designing a new reduce, reuse, recycle, compost campaign in Luganvile. We have spent quite some time at this and the final idea is at the designers. The logo, catchphrase and graphic will form a central part of our communications campaign in 2014. Who woulda though, me and marketing and communications. Makes me shiver.
- We set up a Luganville Waste Management Facebook page to keep locals up to date on waste happenings around town.
- We kept the public up to date on changes they needed to know about through newspaper articles, radio campaigns, church announcements, flyers and posters.
*More to be added as I remember*
