The city council is worried by the high rate at which Christchurch's wheelie bins are going missing.

The Christchurch City Council is considering electronically tagging wheelie bins to stop them going walk-about.

The council-issued wheelie bins have proven to be a hot commodity in Christchurch, with about 300 reported missing each month.

In cases where bins are reported missing within 24 hours, the council's contractor wears the cost of replacing them. If people take more than 24 hours to report them missing, they have to pay the replacement cost, which ranges from $109 to $132 depending on the size of the bin.

Council staff say about 100 people are being billed for replacement bins every month.

They are now exploring the possibility of microchipping the bins so contractors can immediately identify if bins are not at the address where they belong. They plan to bring a report to the council on the issue next month.

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Mayor Lianne Dalziel said the technology would not allow the council to track locations of the bins as it did not include GPS capability, but it would allow it to check bins were at the address to which they were assigned.

"It solves the problem of people taking the bins and pulling addresses off them," Dalziel said.

The council issues ratepayers in Christchurch with three wheelie bins – one for green waste, one for general rubbish and one for recyclables – which they pay for through their rates.

The bins have stickers attached to them to identify which property they belong to, and homeowners are supposed to leave them at the property when they move.

The stickers are easy to remove, and in the past four years thousands of bins have been reported missing.

Council staff said the problem of bins mysteriously disappearing was highlighted recently when its contractor went to pick up 70 bins the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority had removed from red-zoned properties on the Port Hills.

The contractor arrived to collect the bins within 24 hours of getting the call to pick them up, but 20 of them had already been taken.