8AM
Long-serving recycling manager Bis paces up and down the tea room, deciding the fates of the recycling crew: who will drive the business truck today, who will sort glass and cardboard, who will bale recycling and who will help customers at the drop-off. He deflects witty comments and abuse from the crew around the table with the panache of a revolutionary leader, which is also the best way to describe his dress sense.
8.10AM
Before the doors open to the public, our big reuse shop has the eerie quiet of a bar or museum after hours. One of the risks of working at Wastebusters is finding yourself regularly pictured in the local newspaper or life-size on the side of a truck. Ben Taylor from the recycling team has agreed to be photographed in his beach attire for our summer advertising, despite the early hour and the chilly, cloudy October day.
You don’t have to be too organised when you do a photo shoot at Wastebusters because there’s a shop full of props at hand. This time, we collect up mis-matched flippers, a boogie board, giant sun umbrella and inflatable shark to give Ben that indefinable Wasties look.
Bruce Shanks is the master baler at Wastebusters, with more than 10 years’ experience.
8.40AM
Mr Manly, our resident cat, is feeling frisky. When staff get carried away with other jobs and don’t show him enough attention, he gives them a quick flick of the paw to get them back on task. Just before the doors are unlocked at 9am, he takes up position in front of the fire, ready for a day of receiving love and attention from customers. It’s hard work, but some cat has to do it. It’s a mystery what he does at night, when his other job is supposed to be controlling rats and mice on the site. For all we know, there may be a unilateral peace agreement dividing Wastebusters into equal territories for rodents and cats.
9AM
Doors open and the customers arrive. The first hour is usually the quietest, so most of the customers are regulars who know the routine and enjoy the early calm in the shop. They also know that we get slammed with drop-offs of donated goods at 4.30pm each afternoon, so morning is the best time to hunt through the new treasures.
9.45AM
The yard outside sells all the outdoors and bigger reuse items, such as skis, mattresses and bikes. Bene, our yard supervisor, and Callum, our newest staff member, are dismantling electronic waste, which we recycle on a user-pays basis. Callum studied product design at uni and can’t believe he’s been lucky enough to find a job where he gets to take things apart. Bene has a deep and esoteric knowledge of old electrical items and has created a shelf in the yard container dedicated to the display of iconic objects such as early Mac computers and valves from an electric organ. Sometimes they get mothers in looking for things their kids can take apart.
"That was me," says Callum.
"I was that kid!"
Bene always finds something for them to take home and dismantle; after all, those kids might end up being our future staff, or the designers who will make the circular economy a reality.
Yard guardians Bene Schwarz and Callum Carbon enjoy breaking down electronic waste so it can be sent for recycling.
10.30AM
Up in the converted container we use for an office, I’m working on sourcing our summer uniform. This summer all our T-shirts will be 100% cotton, so we can put them in a worm farm once they’ve been worn to bits. My mission today is sourcing hard-wearing (and short) work shorts for the women in our recycling team and yard. Every uniform company I contact says the same thing: they’re frustrated that no-one seems to be make them, even though there are multiple options for men. It’s 125 years since women won the vote in New Zealand, but we still can’t get good work shorts!
11.30AM
Damian, our Wanaka Enviroschools facilitator, arrives to show a school class through the recycling yard. He has some great metaphors for recycling involving elephants and the 8-year-olds ask very perceptive questions. It’s not hard to explain the bigger picture of zero waste to children. Often they get it more easily than adults. Which is probably why Damian, and Nicky, our Queenstown Enviroschools facilitator, love their jobs.
Ben Taylor puts on a sunny face for a chilly morning photoshoot in the Wastebusters reuse shop.
12.45PM
The business recycling truck rolls into the yard full to the gunwales with cardboard, cans, glass, paper and plastics. The recycling crew clicks into machine mode to unload the truck as quickly as possible, to get it back out to the more than 300 businesses who recycle in Wanaka. We recently made a new movie ad for our local Cinema Paradiso, which ends with a mass dance in the recycling yard. Maybe that was taking a bit much artistic licence, I think sometimes, but then I see the recycling crew breaking out some moves as they unload the truck.
Meanwhile, Bruce opens the press doors to release another bale of cardboard. He grabs his marker pen and draws on a smiley face with "another awesome bale to you from Wanaka". I always wonder if it makes the reprocessors smile in Korea and South East Asia when they get our bales with Bruce’s messages. For sure, they make me smile every day when I walk past them to the office.
2PM
In between looking after customers, Alison, in the shop, is putting aside 87 cups and saucers to lend to the Hawea Flat School fair for their Devonshire teas. None of them match; we’re going for "retro chic". Wastebusters sponsors community groups, not-for-profits and schools, mostly with reuse materials and other times with recycling services. We love helping them make our community a more exciting place to live and making it possible for community events and performances to use second-hand goods and make less waste.
In the metals area, Pete is putting aside any random metal items that could be useful for the sculpture artists who make amazing robots and ray-guns out of them. We use the waste hierarchy as our compass (reduce, reuse, recycle), so we always try to support reuse where it’s an option.
Bruce Shanks hand-writes a message on every bale of cardboard that leaves the site.
4.30PM
It’s the final rush to drop off donated goods to the shop. Car boots disgorge their booty and the drop-off zone is swamped. The shop staff work at double speed to get everything under cover for the night. One of the hardest conversations is rejecting donated goods we can’t sell, mostly things that are stained, ripped or broken. Our mission is to find resources a second life, so anything beyond hope is sent to the landfill next door.
Inside the shop, customers are busy doing some last-minute shopping before we close at 5pm. Even though we’re open seven days a week, there’s always a last-minute panic to find that perfect thing waiting for you somewhere in the shop, if only you look in the right place.
Metal artists often collect random objects from Wastebusters and turn them into pieces of art, like this ray gun by Sean Boyd.
4.45PM
Shay unlocks the new uniform container to stow some spare fluoros. The padlock combination is a carefully guarded secret that only a very few staff are allowed to know (and anyone who gives it to the revolutionary leader will face a dawn firing squad). Is that to combat potential theft of boots and singlets? No. In Wastebusters world, the biggest threat is filling every space in the storage container with useful objects, meaning we’ll never be able to to find the spare uniforms again. Wastebusters staff are mostly people who can see the potential in things, so we’ve resorted to padlocking ourselves out of our own storage spaces. Better to sell everything to our customers now and trust that what we need will appear at the right time.
5PM
Our customers head out the gates freed from the things that were cluttering their lives, and with just a few new treasures to find spaces for at home. All the staff do a quick tidy-up and head off by 5.15pm to make the most of the Wanaka sunshine. The echo of the day’s activity fades away and just the wind toys spin in the breeze. Lumpy tarpaulins cover the furniture left outside for the night. Wastebusters belongs to Mr Manly and the rodents for another night.
