Soft Plastic Recycling

Eco-warrior and Trash Talking Mama Hayley Crawford is passionate about reducing waste. This week she looks at which soft plastics can be recycled and who will take them.

There have been several changes on the recycling front recently including the collection of soft plastics resuming at locations in Auckland, Waiheke Island, Hamilton and Wellington, look for the green and white bins at selected Countdown, Pack n Save, The Warehouse and Huckleberry stores.

The rule of thumb is … if you can scrunch it up into a ball or rip it by hand you can recycle it in a soft plastics recycling bin, if you can’t scrunch it up put the item in your curb side recycle bin.

Plastics that can be recycled in the soft plastics bin include food packets, plastic around gift items and homewares, packaging waste such as shrink wrap, bubble wrap, or large plastic bags.

For more information go to recycling.kiwi.nz

However, please don’t see this as a solution as we need to drastically reduce our use of soft plastics or the scheme will become overwhelmed again and much of it will end up in landfill.

This is from The Packaging Forum …

“12 months ago, there was no onshore processing of post-consumer soft plastics. Today there are two North Island plants; Future Post in Waiuku and Second Life Plastics in Levin – which are great examples of Kiwi ingenuity this is where your recycled soft plastic ends up.

To have a sustainable circular economy where waste materials are re-processed into new valuable products and commodities, we need industry, councils and government departments to start buying productss which are made from our recycling efforts.

You can help by purchasing the products that are made from your recycled soft plastics this includes fence posts, buckets, ducting cable, grip steps, waterslides. More information on where you can purchase these products in New Zealand is here.”