Recycled plastic has value
An agricultural plastic recycling business is leading the way when it comes to saving the environment. By Sonita Chandar.
Since its inception in 2007, the agricultural plastic recycling business Plasback has collected more than 32,000 tonnes (32 million kilograms) of plastic waste from farms all over New Zealand.
The business has come a long way since it collected its first consignment of used silage wrap from South Canterbury farmers John and Noeline Peters in 2007.
Plasback commercial manager Neal Shaw says it is positive to see the agricultural industry’s growing appreciation of the need to recycle used plastic.
“More and more companies have realised they must provide their customers a way to dispose of their waste responsibly.”
Fonterra’s Co-operative Difference Payment, which took effect in June 2021, has given the initiative a big boost. Under thisscheme,upto10centsoffonterra shareholders’ milk payment comes from their efforts to farm sustainably. One measure they can take to achieve this payment is to recycle their used plastic.
“Thishaspromptedabigincreasein demand for our on-farm collection service, and we have put the infrastructure in place to be able to handle it,’’ Shaw says. “We recently commissioned three new balers, which brings our total up to nine balers across the country, enabling us to process the plastic we gather more efficiently’’.
The company is also developing a new site in Christchurch with larger capacity to cope with the collection and baling.
Shaw says Plasback is still focusing on collecting silage wrap and pit covers from farms – the two main streams of products it began with. But there has been an upturn in demand to recycle other products.
“We have collected alkathene, vineyard netting and we more recently collected waste plastic such as building wrap from the construction sector.
“Wewerehappytostepinandassist these businesses who were looking for a solution to dispose of these products through recycling rather than landfill.”
The Government has set a target date of June next year to have a mandatory, industry-wide product stewardship scheme in place for all agricultural plastics.
Discussions about the shape of that scheme are underway. Plasback wants to ensure any levies applied do not significantly increase the amount that farmers have to pay to cover the cost of recycling. “Plasback has shown that when farmers and suppliers directly cover some of the cost of collection and reprocessing, it is possible to provide an efficient, costeffective service. We want this model to be part of any future product stewardship scheme,”shawsays.
He says as the pressure on farmers to dealwiththeirplasticwastebuilds,some potential recyclers may look to cut corners by collecting loose plastic rather than using Plasback’s bin and liner system.
Doing this can reduce the value of the waste plastic to manufacturers because it isdirtyandmoredifficulttodealwith,as well as add significant costs to transport to secondary sorting sites. “We don’t want to see New Zealand get a reputation for supplying low-quality recyclables.
“Each tonne of plastic collected and recycled represents 1.27 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, so 21,000 tonnes represents about 26,670 tonnes of CO2,” Shaw says.
“Using the sustainability agency Encon’s CO2 offset formula, this amounts to the carbon bound by 1,111,250 trees. That has got to be good for everyone.”