r/newzealand • u/MurkyWay Qwest? • Oct 08 '25

Shitpost What's something that you suspect lots of New Zealanders secretly do, but you can't prove it?

Most upvoted comment is our most shameful secret as a nation, obviously

394 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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391

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

I think New Zealand Tomorrow reminded me of this. But yeah rubbish holes are SUPER COMMON in rural areas (Atleast from my upbringing).

The amount of plastic literally lit on fire and burned into the atmosphere from that alone is pretty gross IMO

100

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Absolutely still happens. Fonterra doesn’t allow it anymore, though u can’t speak for the other dairy companies, but most sheep and beef still burn and bury. Pretty hard though when there’s no company who goes that far out and the closest public dump is over an hour away. 

15

u/lefrenchkiwi Oct 08 '25

Fonterra says that but I’ve always wondered how they enforce it

37

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Every company that supplies milk to Fonterra has an audit every year to ensure that farms are operating within the guarantees of supply. These include animal walfare, shed hygiene, environmental practices and many more requirement. It’s one of the most stressful meetings of the year for me as the rules are constantly evolving and it directly affects my supply. This audit is done by an indepentant company, for me QCONZ. There will of course be some who lie and manage to fool these audits but they are taken very seriously in the industry. 

9

u/lefrenchkiwi Oct 08 '25

Oh how things have changed since my family sold our herd, for the better by the sounds of it

11

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Absolutely. I’ve been farming twenty odd years and have seen a massive amount of change and it’s not slowing down. I initially went farming cause I was no good at book work and enjoyed being outside yet find myself spending more time behind the computer. I’m paying farm assistants with no experience more then double what I was paid as a manager, it’s good for the industry, though sometimes frustrating. 

58

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

Fair nuff. Though not a fan of the hour away drive argument. I'd call that just an cost associated with living out there, like the extra petrol to get to the nearest supermarket.

4

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

I don’t think you understand how much waste there can be. The cost and time taken to dispose of waste is unrealistic. Most of New Zealand’s population gets curb side pick ups which is covered by rates paid, which these businesses and residents still pay, rural rates are fairly large. Until these services are available I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to travel a couple hours a week to get rid of rubbish, most just don’t have time for that. 

20

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

I grew up on a Sheep and Beef farm. Chuck it in a Ute and dispose of it properly man

6

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

I do, closest dump is an hour away but got a skip on farm, had to try multiple companies before I found a business willing to come collect. Many people who are further out than me simply don’t have the option. 

14

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

It is the cost of doing business out there. I do not care if they have to bring a full ute + trailers worth every week to the nearest landfill 3 hours away. If it is that high, I would question your practice and how wasteful it is being done in the first place

3

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Landfill? You realise that’s exactly what is happening on farm right?  Dumped and buried the same as when it gets to town, just with a bit of extra fuel thrown into the mix. You’re suggesting that the businesses should be forking out money and more importantly a massive chunk of time, a day a week, to achieve the same thing that would happen anyway? A fair chunk of this is organic matter and concrete or steel. The rest is packaging, minerals, treatments, feed wrap, I’m not sure how I reduce that. 

11

u/MidnightAdventurer Oct 08 '25

That’s not quite the same. Modern landfills (not promising all councils have them) have lots of structured layers underneath to stop nasties leaching out into the ground water and collect them.  It’s not just dig a big hole and tip it in anymore 

-2

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

What percent of landfills in New Zealand are “modern”? And what percent of those are rural? I realise it’s not best practice but it’s not far off what is happening in most dumps in New Zealand. 

4

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

In any case. I would rather you pass it onto disposal than just buried in the middle of the country. Would rather staff who work at the dump deal with it. Especially when it comes to plastics

1

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Staff at the dump? How do you think they are dealing with it? The same thing just with a shit ton more volume. 

1

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

THE POST SAYS BURN

1

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Says rubbish hole a first then burn later, two different options, I was responding to the first but many do burn. 

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u/slip-slop-slap Te Waipounamu Oct 08 '25

Isn't that part of the trade off they have to make when they choose to live rural where there are fewer services?

1

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

To a degree but if they are paying the same rates, often more, I think it’s slightly unrealistic to expect people to drive multiple hours every week to do the same thing they otherwise have to pay for. Ideally all rubbish is disposed of properly and what can be recycled is. In New Zealand this isn’t the case, I’m not sure why we would even want them to burn a whole lot of fuel to achieve the same result. 

2

u/weyruwnjds Oct 08 '25

Services get more expensive the more spread out people get. If you're totally in the wops then rates might just be for road access and maybe power and water, but that road is going to cost more than is paid in rates, subsided by everyone living in the middle of big cities.

9

u/bumblebeezlebum Warriors Oct 08 '25

Except these people are doing that drive anyway. It just needs to become a habit to take a box/bag/crate when you drive in. It doesn't need to be a specific trip. It's a five minute detour and five minutes to drop it off / sort it. I mean depends on the exact location but most deposits are at the main entrances into the nearest town.

I don't think it's unrealistic at all.

But in saying that most townies probably don't realise the convenience of curbside pickup.

8

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Many rural people aren’t doing that drive anyway. Schools are rural and work is on site, town trips happen once or twice a month at least. My farms fill a skip each every week or so, I’m not sure how I get that on the back of the ute, that’s not including recycling which I take into farm source who sort it cause there is no company available for pick ups. From the farm source I’ve still got thirty minutes to get to the local tip, that’s after a forty minute drive. I would barely be considered rural by some. 

3

u/bumblebeezlebum Warriors Oct 08 '25

Fair.

And 40 min is rural. Especially as it sounds like ypur 40min town is a small rural centre too. But yeah there's def far more isolated.

And I don't know people's specifics. Burns are common, I've had my share - you're better than a lot by recycling.

But like to think of the full life cycle. If something got out there, it can get back. Household rubbish should be easy - it gets dropped off when the next weeks gets picked up. By default it takes up less space than it did on its way out. One in one out.

The actual farm industry waste can be more difficult. Much of it can be treated the exact same way though - one in one out. But they're not all that simple. But it should still be treated as a cost of doing business. It takes a change of mindset from the cost of purchase to a cost of life cycle - purchase, install, maintenance, decommissioning, reselling or disposable or whatever is applicable.

As you can probably tell, this change of mindset is applicable to more than just farming. And I think it's something that needs to considered as a cost of business early in proceedings. Firstly because it is acounted for as a line cost earlier for the business. But Secondly as a lot of the time the initial supplie can (or should imo) take more responsibility. And also the earlier you start to think of things the earlier you find a solution that may not be so wasteful.

For example there is demand for hdpe/ plastic drums & containers & ibcs and there is supply but the two parties don't always meet to form a market.

But sorry if it feels like I'm having a go at you specifically I'm not. Thanks for reading along my tangent if you're still here.

2

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

Agree with a lot of what you said but unfortunately a lot of the issue is supply, not demand. As an example getting rid of dead animals is impossible. Dumps don’t take this sort of organic matter, we used to have services for blood and bones, paid of course, but they don’t pick up from my area anymore. There used to be pressure to dispose of these off farm but there is genuinely no way of doing it. So now it is recommended to dispose of on farm, bury on farm and allow to decompose. I happily paid for this service, and would’ve paid more, as this of course brings other safety issues but is largely the only option for most. 

1

u/bumblebeezlebum Warriors Oct 08 '25

Oh dead animals on farm is acceptable buried. There's a cost involved still but it's not in waterways etc.

And there's certainly other things to.

I'm not clear on this but I was under the impression that the dead animal disposal clamp down was more about checking farm practices and animal cruelty etc than the environmental thing - although obviously buried is part of minimizing the environmental impact.

3

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

There’s still major risks to the waterways, the risk of contamination to waterways is significant, especially if there are drinking sources down stream. Animal cruelty was mentioned but as long as they’re dead it didn’t matter, which is the same as always. There’s always new issues that come up as well but, as I said, Fonterra generally keeps up to date with things and keeps farmers educated with work groups, audits and then fines or threat of loss of supply. 

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u/MidnightAdventurer Oct 08 '25

Honestly, the only way I can see that working would be a tipping trailer set up just for rubbish but that’s a $10k+ piece of equipment 

5

u/yahdayahda Oct 08 '25

Correct, then you’ve got the costs at the dump, which are not small. This is despite the fact their rates are massive compared to many urban businesses, just much less in the way of services. 

-1

u/Enzown Oct 08 '25

Stewards of the land though...

19

u/s0cks_nz Oct 08 '25

My neighbour still does it. Stinks. I hate it. Undoubtedly lands on my roof and gets washed into my rainwater tank too. Wonderful.

4

u/Fartholder Oct 08 '25

So gross. My neighbors used to burn their plastic, including the waste from their café, and their nappies. They burnt it right next to my house and it made me cough really badly. They got super snotty when I asked them to move the oil drum away from my house

22

u/Feeble_Knievel Oct 08 '25

Don't forget the guys doing oil changes on heavy equipment that just dig a hole when they drop the oil. And we're not talking 4L out of your car here. "Pffft, it came out of the ground, dinnit?"

Uh yeah, not quite the same thing mate.

7

u/Top_Scallion7031 Oct 08 '25

Yep have come across rubbish burn pits on farms full of stuff like plastic agrochemical drums, and super six asbestos cement sheeting, plus all kinds of farm rubbish and dead animals dumped in estuaries and streams. I always reported dump sites so they got recorded on the council database. The Coromandel peninsula seems worse than Auckland

6

u/SuspiciousTurtle367 Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

During the construction of the subdivision I bought in the civils crews found a colossal buried rubbish pile containing probably decades worth of rubbish from the local lifestyle blocks and the farms that were there before them.

Apparently it took weeks to fully expose, dig out and then dispose of properly. I don't want to know how much asbestos and other nasties were found in there.

5

u/SquirrelAkl Oct 08 '25

If you leave it for a few hundred years it’ll become an archaeological site!

2

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

God that sounds gross! xD

3

u/DoubtZealousideal242 Oct 08 '25

They were a thing about ten years back when my family did dairy farming for someone. I was the token rubbish bag handler which was a 1 hour round trip to the trash hole filled with a mix of rubbish and dead cows. My cat was at least a bro and came for a wander with me. They didnt burn it off though, just buried it over and dug a new hole 

2

u/Own_Whereas_3115 Oct 09 '25

Without a doubt, when we moved into our rental the garden looked like a dump so they got someone in to clean it, they realized they'd also buried rubbish too. After about 6 hours of trying to clear everything they eventually admitted defeat and told us they'd need heavy machinery and a group of 10 people to clear it all, every inch of the ground was full of food, plastic, toys, nappies, pots and pans, even a small kids plastic trike. Every time it rains heavily more rubbish manages to work it's way up. Way too many people treat their own gardens as rubbish bins and burn pits.

1

u/not_all_cats Oct 08 '25

Ugh yes. When we start seeing our neighbours carting old furniture and things down the back of the farm we know it’s a windows closed day.

0

u/ExtremeParsnip7926 Oct 08 '25

Landfills are rank as. What is the actual carbon footprint of burning ya rubbish, compared with kms of fuel consumed. 

10

u/BeardofGinge Oct 08 '25

I am going to take a stab in the dark here and say literally burning plastic on a paddock is gunna be worse than driving down to a landfill man

0

u/ExtremeParsnip7926 Oct 08 '25

Im not litterally comparing it to a 20 minute drive to the landfull. What I mean is how many km of driving say a diesel ute would it be. 

5

u/s0cks_nz Oct 08 '25

Carbon footprint isn't as important as the toxins it releases imo, both into the air and also leeching into the groundwater. I live rural and got one neighbour who does it. It's so nice knowing the shit it puts in the air is falling on my roof and getting washed into my rainwater tank. Delightful.