First electric kerbside waste collection truck arrives

Waste Management NZ’s first electric truck for residential wheelie bin waste collections was demonstrated today and will start work from October.

Christchurch will be the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to put a 100% electric residential waste collection truck into service.

More electric trucks will go into Waste Management’s fleet in other cities near the end of this year.

The electric truck fleet move was announced in September last year as part of Waste Management’s sustainability commitment.

The company has introduced more than 20 electric cars within its light fleet. It also launched an electric box body truck, which collects food waste from Countdown supermarkets across Auckland, earlier this year.

This new electric truck is the first designed and dedicated to collecting residential wheelie bins from the kerbside.

“With a large fleet of trucks and cars on the road, we believe we can help safeguard our environment for future generations through the adoption of electric vehicle technology,” Waste Management managing director Tom Nickels says.

Waste taken to the company’s modern, sustainable landfill and energy parks is used to generate electricity, which is then fed into the national grid.

This is possible because Waste Management’s landfill technology holds all waste in a sealed environment. This means it can capture the naturally emitted gas from the waste as it digests anaerobically, which is then fed into generators to create power.

Up to 95% of gas emissions are captured through this process, putting enough back into the national grid to power 18,000 homes nationally.

Initial calculations suggest collecting waste in this new truck from 1200-1500 homes daily will fill the truck to its 16-tonne capacity. The gas produced by that waste through the landfill will produce about 6000kWh of electricity. This is enough energy to run the truck, with additional power to run 275 homes for a day.