Invercargill ratepayers are paying for glass bottles to be recycled, but they are then being dumped back out on a cleanfill site.

The council has a contract with Southland Disability Enterprises in Ettrick St, which took delivery of the city's wheelie bin service – one bin for rubbish and another for recycling – on July 4.

Glass bottles are dropped off, sorted and separated from other rubbish before being sent to the council's transfer centre on Bond St, where they are supposed to be stockpiled until they can be recycled. However, Bond Contracts is taking the bottles to a cleanfill site at Switzer St.

There, they are being spread out on the landfill and buried, which means they can never be recovered for reuse.

Invercargill City Council waste minimisation senior officer Donna Peterson said the Switzer St cleanfill site was not a dump but aa temporary measure.

"They are buried along with soil, concrete and bricks, which are all flattened out for land reclamation," Ms Peterson said.

Cleanfills are landfills that accept only material that, when buried, will have no adverse effect on people or the environment. Cleanfill material includes natural materials such as clay, soil and rock, and other inert materials.

Environment Southland communications co-ordinator Michele Poole said glass bottles were permitted in a cleanfill as long as the area was less than 500 cubic metres and not within 10 metres of water.

Southland DisAbility Enterprises general manager Ian Beker said that the centre was experiencing a 300 per cent increase in bottles recycled since the new centre had opened, and it was a demand that the centre could not cope with.

When asked if ratepayers were paying for glass to be sorted at the centre he said: "Yes."

However, the Enterprise Centre was paying for them to be taken away, not ratepayers.

"We do not want to keep using the cleanfill. It will be more economical for us to store them in a yard, which we are looking for," Mr Beker said.

He was disappointed they did not have the means to recycle the glass at the centre because there were markets crying out for recycled glass sand that would produce an ultimate return for the centre and ratepayers, he said.