Less Waste – New recycling rules

Standardising across New Zealand what can be put into our household kerbside recycling bins is a no-brainer. And the new rules came in on February 1. Probably not many people realise that, up until now, different councils collected different things at kerbside. That means when Aucklanders spent a weekend in Mangawhai, for example, they were very likely to put wrong things in the recycle bins, contaminating Kaipara’s recyclables.

So what do the changes mean for us? It’s very simple. Think grocery packaging. These are the only things to put in your bin:

• Plastic bottles and containers numbers 1,2 and 5 from your kitchen, bathroom and laundry. Make sure they are empty and rinsed out. If they are not 1, 2 or 5 throw them in the rubbish.
• Cans – tin, steel and aluminium, empty and clean
• Glass bottles and jars, empty and clean
• Newspaper, magazines (including glossy ones), paper, cardboard, egg cartons and even pizza boxes, as long as there is no pizza left inside. Remove bubble wrap or polystyrene from cardboard boxes.

That’s it. Nothing else. Easy to remember.

What we can no longer put in our bins that we used to be able to:

• no Tetra Pak (commonly used for milk and juice cartons)
• no lids or caps, so make sure you take the lids off everything – wine bottles, milk bottles and all containers, except if lids are still attached, such as steel can lids.
• no aerosol cans
• nothing smaller than 50mm x 50mm
• nothing larger than four litres

And, of course, there is a long list of things that we never should have been putting in our recycling anyway such as batteries, broken plates, light bulbs and plastic bags.

Don’t be a wish cycler! If in doubt, throw it out. Alternatively, there are places you can take them. For example, plastic bags can be dropped off at supermarkets to be sent down to Future Post in Waiuku to be made into fence posts; Tetra Pak can be dropped off for free at Mahurangi Wastebusters site in Snells Beach, now called Less.waste, from where it will be sent down to Saveboard in Hamilton, who make a type of plywood out of it.

So what happens to the other things we have put in our kerbside recycling bin? Once it has been sorted at Visy in Onehunga by a MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) some is exported, but a lot of it is made into new products right here in NZ – glass is processed into new glass containers by O-I Glass in Penrose or made into roading material; plastics no. 1 are made into new food containers by Pact Packaging in Lower Hutt; plastics 2 and 5 are re-manufactured into all kinds of tools, containers and garden products; cardboard and paper are processed into packaging material in Penrose.

There are many more things that can be recycled at Less.waste community recycling centres in Snells Beach and Wellsford including batteries, polystyrene, e-waste and much more.

Of course, the best thing we can do is to reduce the amount of plastic we use altogether and the next best is to use our spending power to buy products in recyclable containers, so the circle is complete.

For more information: www.mahurangiwastebusters.co.nz