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Best of 2024: Ryan Bridge - Why are we paying $80 a year for a bin no one uses? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So based on the calculations that I have done on
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the back of an envelope, which you probably shouldn't trust.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: But according to the grocery I don't want to call
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: them wings, but the people the group who are upset
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: about the monopoly duopoly that's happening in our grocery sector,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you could save at most per person about seventy four
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: dollars per year if they were to have perfect competition
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in the sector, which obviously would be very hard to achieve.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Do you know what else costs you eighty dollars a year.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: A friend and I were chatting at the gym the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: other day and he showed me his rates bill, which
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: he had kindly brought to the gym to encourage him
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to run faster. Anyway, there's an eighty dollar targeted rate
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: for the food compost bin. And he said, what's that for?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And I was like, it's the green bin that's on
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the street that no one uses. Then he was running
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: faster than I've ever seen him run on the treadmill. Anyway,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: So apparently sixty to sixty five percent of us don't
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: use them. And if you walk down this is the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: food scrapspin. They know they have them in other parts
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of the country. In Auckland we've only got just recently,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: so we're all getting a bit used to them. But
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: eighty dollars a year is what you have to pay.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And I got quite angry when I thought about because
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: we were talking if you're on a fixed income, eighty
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: dollars a year is a lot of money. If you're
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a pensioner and you cannot opt out of this service,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: who else can charge you for a service that you
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: don't want or need. What about a pensioner who's you know,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: does her own or hurt his own composting in the backyard.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: They can't opt out of it. They have to have
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: this bin and they have to pay eighty dollars per
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: year for the privilege. It's like your barber sending like
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a barber giving a lady a beard trimmer and saying, here,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm going to charge you for that. I don't need it.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Oh well you have to have it? Why? Just cause?
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And you know what, they're all made of plastic, these bins.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So how's that for the environment? For more from Early
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to news talks. It'd
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: be from five am weekdays or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,