Pupils take plastic bag issues to town
‘‘We've been working with councils, recyclers and packaging suppliers since 2013 to develop a viable replacement for the polystyrene foam meat tray.’’ Foodstuffs' Mike Sammons
Pukeokahu School pupils have taken their passion for the environment to the shops in Taihape.
Pupils from the school, which is about 30 minutes east of Taihape, turned up at the town’s New World to grill the boss about his store’s use of plastic bags.
Pukeokahu is an Enviro School, which means it is ‘‘really committed’’ to having an ongoing environmental project running in the classroom, principal Jan Casey said.
It was also in tune with the neighbourhood in which the school worked, where farmers had drawn up a master plan to do battle with the predators that roamed their countryside, she said.
At the centre of the kids’ concern was their finding that plastic bags kill sea animals, so they went to New World to interview store manager Adrian Rees about it.
Their questioning of Rees soon boiled down to the economics of the matter: what would be the cost difference, they asked, between New World buying in paper bags versus plastic bags for people to use?.
Paper bags, they were told, were more expensive, although commercial sensitivities meant the precise figures were still under wraps.
However, New World was proud of the fact it gave a 5c rebate to customers who shopped with a reusable bag.
So hessian bags were given out to families, clear plastic trays had been developed for meats and work was also proceeding on biodegradable bags for fruit and produce.
Nationally, Foodstuffs, which owns New World, had more than 100 stores recycling soft plastic packaging, sustainability manager Mike Sammons said.
It’s a programme, launched by former Environment Minister Nick Smith in 2015, that is still being rolled out, with Rangitikei scheduled for later this year.
Sammons said the packaging was reprocessed into new products like outdoor furniture, decking and more recycling bins.
Foodstuffs also used recyclable meat trays, which meant customers diverted about 90 million polystyrene trays away from landfills every year.
‘‘We’ve been working with councils, recyclers and packaging suppliers since 2013 to develop a viable replacement for the polystyrene foam meat tray,’’ said Sammons.
’’This project pulled together all the players in the lifecycle of this piece of packaging, which we believe is a New Zealand first,’’ he said.