What Actually Happens to Your Junk After We Take It

When a junk removal truck pulls away from your place, it's fair to wonder where it's all headed. Straight to the tip? Not if we can help it. A big part of doing this job properly is making sure as little as possible ends up in landfill. Here's what really happens to your load.

Step one: we sort it

Before anything gets dropped anywhere, we separate your load into a few streams. It's the single most important part — a pile of "rubbish" is usually a mix of things that belong in very different places.

Reusable items go to charity and reuse

Furniture, appliances, tools, homeware — if it's still got life in it, it doesn't belong in a hole in the ground. Good-condition items go to Christchurch op shops, reuse stores and charities so someone else can get use out of them. One household's clear-out is another family's furniture.

Recyclables get recycled

A lot of what people think of as junk is actually recoverable material:

• Metal — whiteware, bed frames, tools and offcuts go to scrap metal recyclers.
• Timber — clean wood can be repurposed or recycled rather than dumped.
• Green waste — branches, prunings and garden clean-ups go to composting, not landfill.
• E-waste — old electronics are kept out of the tip and sent to proper e-waste recyclers.

Only genuine rubbish goes to the transfer station

Whatever's left — the stuff that truly can't be reused or recycled — is taken to a Council EcoDrop transfer station and disposed of the right way. By that point it's a fraction of what we picked up.

No mystery, no shortcuts

We're a small local crew, not a faceless operation — so we do this the way we'd want it done at our own place. If you ever want to know where something specific ended up, just ask.