Soft plastic recycling returns to Invercargill
Soft plastics in the deep south might no longer be heading to landfill as collection sites are introduced at The Warehouse and Woolworths.
The Packaging Forum announced the scheme’s arrival in Invercargill and Gore this week in the hopes of bringing new life to the items, rather than their being discarded in the rubbish.
It’s a national scheme that takes all soft plastic bags including bread bags, frozen food bags, chip packets - anything plastic that can be scrunched into a ball - to be recycled into new products.
The bins have been set up at The Warehouse, Woolworths Tay St and Woolworths Waikiwi in Invercargill, where collections have already begun.
Lyn Mayes, the scheme’s soft plastic recycling scheme manager, said there had been “considerable requests from locals” to return soft plastic recycling to the region. The launch was initially green-lit for just Invercargill, but with the help of Recycle South and retail partners a collection point will also be established in Gore at The Warehouse and Woolworths in the coming weeks, Mayes said.
“It truly is a team effort as the network is multi-layered and significant logistical planning is required - from retailers and their staff managing the bins in store, collectors having capacity to store and bale soft plastics, and matching what we collect with the demand from the three New Zealand Processing plants.”
The scheme collected 745 tonnes of post-consumer soft plastics from more than 300 locations, all of which has been recycled in Aotearoa.
Recycle South’s two processing plants will melt down the reusable plastics into resin pellets in Southland which will then be sold and reused in a variety of organisations.
Hamish McMurdo, Recycle South’s general manager, said he was pleased to be a part of the scheme. “Given our ability to further process these plastics back into resin, Recycle South is able to commitment to provide working opportunities for our disabled staff.”
Phil Cumming, The Warehouse Group’s group sustainability lead, said the addition of Gore‘s store meant there were now 52 locations across the motu where communicates can recycle their soft plastics at The Warehouse.
The addition of the Gore and Invercargill sites also meant almost 90% of New Zealanders had a collection site within 20km of their homes or workplaces, something Southland Woolworths New Zealand’s group manager David Smale said he was thrilled about. “With the introduction of our Invercargill store into the mix, we are slowly ensuring more customers across the country can easily access as soft plastics recycling scheme.”
More sites are planned to be established.