A container carrying 4340 of the 240-litre wheelie bins arrived at Port Chalmers on Monday, after being carried by ship to Dunedin from Auckland.
Its contents are now in storage inside a Sawyers Bay warehouse. A worker from subcontractor Icon Logistics has been given the unenviable job of attaching a yellow plastic lid to each of the wheelie bins during the next few weeks.
More shipping containers are due in the next month, beginning with a second shipment arriving today, as the remaining 40,660 wheelie bins make their way south.
Mayor Dave Cull, Dunedin City Council infrastructure services committee chairman Cr Andrew Noone and council staff visited the warehouse yesterday to inspect the first shipment.
The wheelie bins are expected to be delivered to Dunedin homes from mid-January, before the launch of the new service on February 28.
The new system will see each household provided with a 240-litre wheelie bin - or a smaller 80-litre substitute - for use with plastic, cardboard, paper and other non-glass recyclables.
Existing blue recycling bins would be used for separated glass recycling and existing black bags for rubbish, with wheelie bins collected on alternating weeks.
Council city environment general manager Tony Avery said the 240-litre wheelie bins cost just under $50 each, and the 80-litre wheelie bins just under $40, but both had an estimated 15-year lifespan.
Council solid waste manager Ian Featherston said about 4000 people had requested a smaller 80-litre wheelie bin, but the majority had done so because of the small amount of recycling they expected to generate.
Last month, Mr Avery warned many of the 2000 people who had, by then, requested smaller wheelie bins, mistakenly believed they were for rubbish, not recycling.
He worried a greater-than-expected uptake of smaller bins, based on that mistake, could reduce the overall amount of material recycled, in turn reducing the profits able to be made from on-selling the recycling.
That could have flow-on effects for the cost of the scheme in future years, potentially lifting the $63-per-household cost, he said.
However, Mr Featherston said yesterday that was no longer a concern, as the uptake of smaller bins was not expected to reduce overall recycling rates.
"The impacts on the amounts recovered won't be as great [as feared]," he said.
The new wheelie bins would be delivered with stickers showing what could be recycled and an individualised calendar indicating which week to put out each wheelie bin.
