HAMILTON WEST WOMAN GETS THREE COUNCIL LETTERS ABOUT BINS, NONE OF THEM AGREE

A Hamilton West pensioner has received three letters from Hamilton City Council in seven days, each giving different instructions about her recycling, and none of them signed by the same person.

Margery Tarrant, 71, of Sandwich Road, said the first letter arrived Monday and told her glass was to go in the red crate from October. The second arrived Wednesday and said glass wasn't collected at the kerb at all anymore. The third, on Friday, thanked her for taking part in a trial she's never signed up to.

"My Gerald, God rest him, would've had words," Mrs Tarrant told The Daily Yarn, holding all three letters in a plastic sleeve. "He did the bins for forty years. Now they want me to sort by letter, and the letters can't even sort themselves."

A neighbour two doors down, Pauline Whitiora, said she'd had four letters, one addressed to a bloke who died in 2019. "They've got him down for a green bin upgrade. He's been in the ground six years. Council reckons he's keen."

A Hamilton City Council spokesperson said the letters were part of a "transitional communications rollout" being run by an Auckland consultancy. Asked how much the consultancy was being paid, the spokesperson said that was commercially sensitive. Asked which letter residents should actually follow, they said "the most recent one, generally", then mentioned a fourth letter was going out next week.

Mrs Tarrant has stuck all three on the fridge and is doing what she's done since 1983, which is rinse the bottles and put them in the wrong bin on purpose.