WasteMINZ has released research on plastic recycling around the country with some startling results. They found that every year 97 million recyclable plastic containers are going to landfill instead of being recycled.
They also found the most common plastic container disposed of by households is single-use bottles.
WasteMINZ chief executive Janine Brinsdon joined Jesse Mulligan to explain what they have learnt from their bin audit.
Photo: 123rf
She says the undertook the research to find out what was happening with households and their rubbish disposal.
“There’s a real knowledge gap in the market as to what households’ are putting into rubbish and what they’re putting into recycling.”
She says the biggest surprise they found was that even though most people know drink bottles can be recycled, almost 39 percent ended up in rubbish rather than recycling.
“I think there could be some improvements made in both of the labelling of the actual bins – which ones are rubbish and which ones are recycling – and also on the drink bottles themselves.”
They found that 81 million containers had no recycling information on them at all.
“Even if you’re trying to do the right thing by the environment and for future generations, if you’re not told what the containers are and what they consist of, it’s very difficult to make an informed decision.”
One of the ways WasteMINZ has been helping is by getting councils around the country to standardise bin labelling nationally, with red for rubbish and yellow for recycling.
“There’s a lot of work around standardisation of the collection, and standardisation of the messaging of materials which will go some way to improving our collection rate.”
