I love that Nelson is to be the first city in NZ to have a kerbside recycling service for soft plastics funded by industry. The proposed trial was announced last month but was dependent on 1000 homes registering to participate. These were secured last week so it is now all go for October. My household is one of those registered and I’m looking forward to being part of this practical initiative to reduce waste.
We have been steadily improving our recycling efforts in Nelson, starting with glass, progressively including cardboard, paper, aluminium and steel cans and, more lately, hard plastics. Soft plastics are extensively used as a means of keeping food safe and fresh, but it has been difficult finding a practical and economic way to collect and reuse these.
I was involved as Environment Minister in 2017 in helping get soft plastic recycling started in NZ, in partnership with The Packaging Forum. This initiative enabled people to drop off their used soft plastics at New World, Countdown and PAK’nSAVE supermarkets and The Warehouse. This has enabled recycling businesses such as Future Post in Blenheim to remanufacture the soft plastics into fence posts for vineyards, farms and home gardens.
The step up to a kerbside recycling service has the advantage of being much more convenient than having to take soft plastics to a specific store. The 1000 participating households will be provided with an orange bag in which to accumulate their soft plastics and put them out in their NCC blue recycling crate. Households not in the trial will be able to continue to use the bins at supermarkets.
It is good that this new kerbside initiative is being funded by The Packaging Forum and not ratepayers. We need to build a culture around waste where manufacturers take greater responsibility for their products and help us find practical and convenient ways to collect and reuse it.
I am proud that Nelson has led NZ on so many environmental issues. My hope is we can make a success of this 1000-home trial of kerbside soft plastic recycling so it can be expanded citywide and then nationwide.
