The annual Recycling Week initiative [October 16–22] is wasting no time in raising awareness and educating Kiwis about waste minimisation and recycling.
Reclaim sustainability manager Nathalia Gonzales told the Times-Age that although she believes New Zealanders are keen recyclers, a large amount of contamination – or “wish-cycling” – does take place, which results in issues down the line, with more resources required to separate materials.
“By understanding the waste minimisation hierarchy and the easy steps you can take towards reducing your overall waste and maximising recycling where possible, the better off we all are,” Gonzales said.
A small yet effective improvement Kiwis can make when recycling, Gonzales said, is preventing soft plastic packaging materials such as chip and biscuit packets from ending up in recycling bins.
South Wairarapa District environmental sustainability advisor Mandy DeRitter, who is a recycling spokesperson on behalf of all three Wairarapa Councils, said disposable coffee cups in recycling bins are a common occurrence, and although these can be recycled, there is nowhere in New Zealand that can separate the plastic polymer lining from the cardboard layer, so the cups go to landfill where they can take 20-30 years to decompose.
The region’s recycling goes to a range of places, Deritter said – soft plastic is currently being made into fence posts by Future Post, for example, while metal is to local scrap merchants, and glass is recycled and made into new bottles at Visy.
While larger items such as tyres are processed to make tyre chips – which can be used for tyre-derived fuel– electronic waste is sent off to Wellington, where it is stripped and its parts are recycled.
Lance Thornton, Earthcare Environmental’s Wairarapa area manager, said since 2019 the region’s recycling has been processed at a materials recovery facility [MRF] that automatically separates different types of plastic and other recycling.
Thornton described the process of deciding what to recycle as “common sense”, although he did note that things like dirty blankets and nappies do occasionally appear in recycling bins.
“With the MRF, there is less recycling contamination, reducing the risk of recycling being rejected by buyers. Ultimately, it also reduces waste transferred to landfill,” Thornton said.
“As the global recycling scene changes, the MRF can be re-programmed to meet the needs of the recycling market.”
DeRitter said that since China began refusing waste from New Zealand, “the local market has become saturated, and only clean recycling is worth the cost of actually recycling the product.”
She also urged residents not to squash their recycling, as the machines at the MRF cannot detect whether recycling materials are squashed or not.
