Seven things to leave out of landfills
We’ve all done it, tossed the odd questionable pizza box, disposable coffee cup, or sauce-laden can into our recycling bin in the hope that it will end up in the right place.
All of our ‘‘I’ll chuck it in anyway’’ items contaminate the rest of our recycling, which then goes to landfill.
Everything in your recycling is sorted by a pair of human hands, not a machine. So please spare a thought for that human before putting any more car engines, toilets, or dirty nappies in with the rest.
However, there are some surprising items that can (and should) be recycled. You just have to know where to turn.
Toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes
Every plastic toothbrush you’ve sent to landfill in your lifetime still exists. TerraCycle is a global waste management organisation that specialises in ‘‘recycling the non-recyclable’’.
The company offers a range of free programmes that are funded by conscientious companies, as well as recycling solutions available to buy for almost every form of waste.
It partners with major consumer product companies, retailers, small businesses and individuals across 20 different countries.
Colgate and TerraCycle are trying to provide a second life for toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, toothpaste caps, floss containers and their outer packaging materials.
It’s free and easy. Join the programme, ship your recycling (the more waste you can collect in your home, school, or office in one go, the better), or drop it off at your nearest collection point.
Metal, electric appliances and e-waste
If your appliances and tech are beyond Trade Me, don’t worry. A growing number of local recyclers will happily take (or even buy) your old whiteware and electronic scrap.
Investigate which company is doing this in your area, or ask on the friendly Zero Waste NZ Facebook page. Other options include Endless Metals and GoRecycle and Appliance Recycling, which take a wide range of materials.
Expired prescriptions
Unused medicines should never be flushed down the loo or put in rubbish bins. Pills need to be professionally incinerated so their chemicals don’t enter our soil or waterways, where they can endanger marine life.
Many pharmacies in collaboration with health boards, offer a free, safe collection and disposal service for unwanted and out-of-date medicines through the Dispose of Unwanted Medicine Properly (DUMP) project. This includes over-the-counter and prescription medicines, sharp items such as needles and cytotoxic (chemotherapy) drugs.
You can give old prescriptions back to your local pharmacy, and even encourage them to ‘‘recycle’’ the medicine by passing it along to others.
Christchurch-based charity Medical Aid Abroad accepts all unused, undamaged and in-date medicines from around New Zealand, and redistributes them to developing countries as needed.
Bras
Bras are one clothing item most of us are more likely to toss than take to the second-hand shop. In some countries they’re a commodity women simply can’t afford. If you have bras you no longer use and they’re in reasonable condition, take them to one of the Uplift NZ’s drop off points so they can live a second life in Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon
Islands, or Bali rather than languish in a landfill.
Coffee machine capsules
New Zealand is ranked the 13thhighest consumer of coffee per capita in the world. More than half of Kiwis ‘‘will go out of their way to find a good cup of coffee’’, found a 2015 Canstar survey. In fact, nearly half of Wellingtonians surveyed said they refused to start their day without one.
If capsules are your caffeine vehicle of choice then relax in the knowledge they can be recycled. The aluminium pods need to be separated from their residual coffee, which becomes compost. Recycled aluminium produces new capsules and other products. TerraCycle does this for L’OR and Moccona, Nescafe, L’Affare, and Grounded coffee capsules. Coffee giant Nespresso has more than 350 collection points for its used capsules, or alternatively you can mail a Nespresso NZ Post recycling bag from any NZ Post shop.
House paint
Resene and Dulux each runs nationwide paint return schemes that take their own leftover paints back for free and non-branded paint for a small fee. Resene’s scheme has already recycled 400,000kg of steel and 200,000kg of plastic, as well as recovered 500,000 litres of solvent-borne paint.
Cosmetics
Zero Waste Week data showed more than 120 billion beauty packages were produced last
year. Nearly all of them were single-use.
Netherlands-based group LCA Centre found that if refillable containers were used for cosmetics, up to 70 per cent of carbon emissions associated with the beauty industry could be eliminated.
An increasing number of ‘‘naked’’, locally-made beauty products have entered the market in response to our demand for less plastic.
If you’re open to eco-swapping (switching out a product for a more eco-friendly alternative) then these are the New Zealand names to look for.
A number of brands also offer their own recycling reward programmes. MAC will swap six empty containers for a free lipstick and Lush exchanges five for a fresh face mask.
Olay begins trialling its topselling Regenerist Whip moisturiser in refillable containers this October, a move that is projected to divert 453,000kg of plastic from the landfill. Good stuff, guys.