It was a really good deal, Bob Gillespie said yesterday, loading up his third trailer with green waste.
He was getting ready to take it to Green Island where, thanks to a Dunedin City Council promotion, he could drop it off for just a gold coin donation to the Rural Fire Service.
''It's not all about money,'' he said, ''but it does make a big difference.''
Mr Gillespie had been planning on getting rid of the green waste anyway, so for him, the deal was especially sweet.
''[It would've been] $120 worth of garbage, plus all the fuel,'' he said.
Mr Gillespie was far from the only one to take advantage of the deal - he counted a line-up that was 80 cars deep after one of his drop-offs.
He had decided to get rid of the green waste - mostly a dried out hedge and dry wood that had been stacked up next to his house - after hearing about the blaze that ravaged parts of Saddle Hill earlier this month.
''When that fire occurred, we decided we better get rid of all [that] stuff.''
And that, Otago Rural Fire Authority principal rural fire officer Dr Stephanie Rotarangi said, is exactly what the DCC and Rural Fire Service hoped people would be doing.
Fighting fires was easiest when homeowners had about 10m of ''defensible space'' - space without easily flammable materials, like dried wood - around their homes.
And in the wake of the Saddle Hill fire, the fire service was prepared for an active season, especially with the dry summer weather typical of El Nino.
''El Nino ... indicates it could be challenging for us to contain fires,'' Dr Rotarangi said.
''We're trying to help Dunedin residents get fire-ready for the fire season.''
