MV Rena Recovery Task

In September 2015, EnviroWaste completed its contracted work on the Rena clean-up. We had a presence in Tauranga since offering our support to Maritime New Zealand on the 5th October 2011, when the MV Rena, the Greek owned container/cargo ship, ran aground on the Astrolabe reef.

Since then we played a leading role in the clean-up, working alongside Maritime New Zealand, Oiled Wildlife Response Unit, Environment Bay of Plenty, Braemar Howells, Resolve Salvage & Fire and P&I Services. The work was gritty, demanding and painstakingly precise - and we felt privileged to do it.

Some of our clean-up work included:

• Capturing, treating and either disposing of or recycling over 2,000 tonnes of liquid waste.
• Creating a sophisticated heavy vehicle wash pad operation to decontaminate machinery used on the beaches.
• Designing, building and operating volunteer personnel decontamination units at the beaches.
• Emptying and disposing of the contents of 144 shipping containers, and washing, returning, or scrapping of the empty containers.
• Disposal or recycling of nearly 6,500 tonnes of shipping container product, including:
• 930 tonnes of steel sent to scrap recyclers,
• 150 tonnes of butter sent for use in biodiesel manufacture and
• 400 tonnes of untreated wood was reused as boiler fuel at a local mill, chipped for landscaping material, or cut for firewood. Some of the wood was also given to the local Council who had it treated and used it for a variety of beautification projects around the city.

When you think about EnviroWaste, most people just imagine the rubbish or recycling truck coming down their street once a week.  But our expertise is far broader than this, which is why we were on-the-ground from day one, assisting other companies to play their part in helping to restore, as best as possible, the Astrolabe reef back to its original, prestine condition.

Pictured below: Cleaning the beach of debris washed ashore from the Rena shipwreck