For the past year, schools and early childhood centres in Nelson and Tasman have participated in Weka Peckers’ competition to collect the most food and beverage cartons for recycling.
In Nature Education were named the ‘Carton Collecting Champions’ and teacher Jodi Ellis was presented with a $500 Warehouse voucher by Conor Carr, Fonterra’s environmental manager for Tākaka and Brightwater, on 13 September.
Motueka Steiner School won second prize, a $100 voucher from New World Motueka.
Third prize was Talleys ‘ice cream for a school event’ and was won by Appleby School.
“To make it fair, we used a ratio of carton weight to the number of students per group so smaller groups wouldn’t be discouraged,” says Ricarda Scherschel of Weka Peckers.
There is no other method for collection and recycling of these containers in Nelson and Tasman, so they can all end up in landfill.
The number of containers collected for the competition means that more than 200 kilograms of waste has been diverted from the region’s landfill.
It is Weka Peckers’ voluntary initiative to be a collection point for these Tetra Pak-like food and beverage cartons, as long as they are opened flat, cleaned and dried, with tops still on.
Last year, they invested in a baler and forklift so they could prepare the flattened containers for shipment to ‘Save BOARD’ in Hamilton where they are recycled into lower-carbon building materials.
From their on-site collection and from Nelson’s Grassroots Recycling collection, Weka Peckers is able to produce one bale a week.
