Clean Stream Waiheke

Clean Stream Waiheke Ltd (CSWL is a result of a partnership between local Waiheke Waste Resource Trust and the Community Business and Environment Centre (CBEC), a community owned co-operative based in Northland. The joint venture partners made a successful tender to the Auckland City Council (ACC) in 2001 for a waste management contract on Waiheke.

The tender included targets for recovering an increasing volume of resources from the waste stream, a community-based approach to education and waste reduction, and a focus on employment generating opportunities.

A key feature of CSWL's tender was the significant cost saving implications for the ACC, not just from the synergies between the refuse and recycling operation and the operation of the transfer station, but also the savings in freight costs from the lower volumes of waste needing to be transported off the island to landfill.

Over the first three years of this contract CSWL performed well above requirements and consistently scored over 90% on the Key Performance Indicator assessment (the council monitors 60 different indicators of performance).

In particular, despite the development boom on Waiheke and the significant growth in population that has resulted, CSWL have held total refuse tonnages at the 1999-2000 level and have substantially increased the amount that is recycled from 150 tonnes prior to their contract to 1,200 tonnes in 2004.

CSWL approached us for a loan for further capital equipment to streamline the green waste and recycling functions at their transfer station. Their central requirement was for finance to purchase a green waste shredder as they had been hiring in a contractor once a month to do this.

The electric machine they purchased led to improvements in the quality of the compost by allowing them to do the shredding when the material is fresh. It also helped reduce the noise disturbance to neighbours that was being caused by the contractors shredding plant.

In addition, they needed further finance to cover the cost of other items of plant to improve storage of sorted recyclables and loading of those when being transported off site.

Prometheus was happy to make this further loan to CSWL and provide ongoing support for this venture. Their track record as a successful resource recovery and waste minimisation operation speaks for itself.