Few people will venture to Omarunui. It’s a private dump site, that’s not open to the public. Jointly owned by Hastings District Council and Napier City Council, but it’s here that many of the public’s belongings damaged from Cyclone Gabrielle are being stored.

Buried deep and out of sight at the very top of the mountain so that a city and its inhabitants can forget what they have been through and move on. If only it were that easy. The rebuild of the region will take months, likely even years. The removal of household waste affected by the floods is just the start. It’s early March in 2023 and public bric-a-brac litters the roadsides in affected areas of Hawkes Bay. Piles upon piles of contaminated and broken household possessions line the pavements awaiting collection by the region’s waste removal services.

The slick gravel track winding to the top of the landfill site is now more mud than gravel. Churned into sludge from the recent wet weather and the consistent flow of waste removal trucks. Their wet loads drip onto the track creating a welcoming carpet of mud and stench that’s reflective of what the populace has had to endure. Truck after truck arrives. Forty or fifty trucks a day. Once at the top, they wait patiently to dump their loads, before being waved on by the landfill staff, who are heavily kitted from head to toe in PPE and waterproof gear.

WASTE SHREDDER

Waiting to greet them amongst the sights and smells of all the debris is Tony Prosser, Machine Operator for Composting New Zealand. His company typically works in the lower North Island from sites in Kapiti, Wairarapa, and Wellington. Their specialty is producing premium organic compost, mulches, and soils from green waste.  At council request they have been asked to also process Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste to assist with the Hawkes Bay clean-up. The recent diversification has seen the company purchase a new Edge Slayer XL from Equip2.

The Waste Shredder is a specialist machine that breaks down C&D material into smaller sizes so that the absolute maximum amount of waste can be packed into a landfill site.  It’s an efficient way to process material and it allows waste to break down more quickly too. The EDGE waste shredder sits at the highest point of the Omarunui Landfill site. The key piece of equipment helping to erase the memories of what people have been through. To the rear of the Shredder are the piles of household items that the trucks have delivered. Tony sorts through the debris with a grab bucket attached to his 20-tonne Excavator. Using the giant claw he continually feeds the Slayer’s shredding chamber. It’s here that the rubble meets two turning shafts with intermeshed teeth that do all the work – breaking the material down into chunks that barely resemble what they were previously. The newly processed material is much smaller and compactable. Using onsite compacters, the debris can now be tightly packed down allowing Tony to fit even more into the excavation site.

Knowing there are stories behind every item, isn’t lost on him and the strain is evident by his tight set jaw. “It’s not very pleasant. You see the possessions that are coming in. Kids’ teddies. Cots. Mattresses. Everything you see in your house. It’s just gone. It’s horrendous and hard to believe until you actually see it.” Someone has to do the work though, and Tony is thankful he can help. The Slayer is a big help to him too. “There’s another shredder being used on site, but the Edge Slayer is way more powerful. It can get through four to five times the amount of material.”

“What I like about the Slayer is it’s a very simple machine that’s really easy to use. And it can fly through the material too. In ten minutes, I can easily clear a bulk forty-foot walking floor trailer.”

LANDFILL PRESHREDDING

The machine has different settings for different types of waste. There’s a mixed waste mode for general C&D waste, a compost and green waste mode, and one for mattresses and carpets too. All of these are useful and can be operated from a remote, allowing Tony to be a one-man band and operate the Slayer as he feeds it from the cab of his digger. Seeing the gains from the Slayer XL has given Tony a new perspective on how landfill sites across New Zealand should be processing waste material. “Once different landfills see what we are doing here it will change the way they deal with waste. Reducing, recycling, and screening rubbish the way we are doing it with the Slayer is something the industry needs to embrace.”

– Article by Alex Wall & Photos by Daisy Thor-Poet, EQUIP2

ABOUT EDGE INNOVATE

EDGE Innovate develops, manufacturers and markets sophisticated technologies for shredding, stacking, screening and sorting of primary and secondary raw materials in production processes and recycling. Our Material handling and recycling range is made up of reliable, durable and cost saving products with a wide range of mobile stockpilers, tracked stackers, tracked and mobile feeders, trommels, slow-speed waste shredders, picking stations, material classifiers, roll-sizers and truck off-loaders. Our product range allows our customers; to shred, screen, separate, stockpile and size a vast array of materials

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