The Sports Hub Race Stand Removal Story has turned into a Trilogy - This is Part 3 - the 99% Recycling Aim.

Maybe 99% of the Public Race Stand will be Recycled – This is the AIM of the NPDC – But not an actual goal – aiming for 99% !

You may recall we said we would come back to the information in the OIA we did about recycling the building materials from the removal of the Public Race Stand, as part of the Sports Hub project (now called TACH).

We’ve attached the document which details the approach to recycling the Public Race Stand.

This is not a plan as such.

The team will tell you how much of everything is saved - as they actually demolish the building. So these numbers and categories aren’t the actual plan for this demolition. It is an example of what may be able to happen.

Perhaps the “examples” of what may be possible in plans is how budgets keep blowing out at the NPDC ?

For those in the industry, this page of information portrays a very expensive exercise.

We have no doubt this is first class recycling, but first class recycling is extremely expensive. And just a reminder this expense is going to be part of a loan that will be borrowed to demolish the building as part of the Sports Hub project.

In a layman’s world:

• The MOST sustainable option would be to NOT demolish the building at all.
• The MOST sustainable option would be to build the 6 courts building in it’s own standalone location and have 2 buildings, if the project was at all feasible.
• There would be a zero carbon footprint if the building WAS NOT demolished at all.

We ask the questions:

Why do we need to truck bits of such a large building around the city and around the country. How is a whole lot of fuel used in trucks good for the environment ?

Much of the machinery used in the demolition is with equipment that runs on fuel. How is that good for the environment ?

A government organisation can put a lot of fancy words on paper that make it look like it is such an amazing thing they are doing for their community. But is it really ?

A really easy answer to Zero Waste would be to leave the building standing. There would be totally zero waste and total zero harm to the existing environment.

Not removing the building at all would be a really good solution to keep the debt incurred down, the trucking and machinery environmental impacts down, and the amount of waste created down.

Just saying – in a Layman’s world this could be a whole lot less complicated.

P.S

We also received an e-mail yesterday letting us know the Sports Hub Contract has gone out for tender.

So even after all the questions to our Mayor, Elected Councillors and Senior Executive Team about not consulting on the demolition of the Public Race Stand, about not asking the people of New Plymouth how they would like to use their Racecourse Reserve, this team of people at the NPDC have taken no notice and are charging ahead with the project.

We would like to suggest you think very carefully when the opportunity to vote comes up in October this year.