Summer Times for Wednesday 15 January 2020

 

9:05 How much of your plastic waste is really being recycled?

Five councils around New Zealand have now stopping taking two thirds of plastic types for recycling as there is nowhere to send them.

Type 3 to 7 plastics cannot be recycled in New Zealand, but many other councils including Auckland and Wellington are still taking them.

At the end of 2017 China banned the import of 24 grades of waste including household plastics and mixed paper. Since then New Zealand has been sending plastic waste to South East Asia, but now Malaysia is also banning imports of non-recyclable plastics.

The Prime Ministers Chief Science Advisor, Juliet Gerrard released a report into plastics in December, Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand, which found 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced globally since the 1950s, of which 79 percent has gone to landfill or been discarded into the environment.

Professor Gerrard explains just what is able to recycled.

 

9:30 Global sand shortage leading to murder and black markets

Sand is a key ingredient in concrete, and concrete is what makes our roads and buildings. Desert sand is not suitable for concrete, and the world is running out of the type of sand needed.

US Journalist and author Vince Beiser has been investigating the history and use of sand says the world uses 50 billion tonnes sand every year and that is fueling a sand mafia in some countries.

He is the author of the 2018 book The World In a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilisation.

9:45 2020 in Taranaki 

Every day we'll be checking in on what's going on in the regions in Aotearoa and the pacific. Today we're speaking to RNZ's Taranaki correspondent Robin Martin about what's going on in the heart of the north island. 

10:05 Cooking with Katherine Mansfield 

Katherine Mansfield is one of the best known figures in New Zealand Literary history, but she was also a gourmand! Nicola Saker is the editor of The Katherine Mansfield cookbook and has been digging back through Mansfield's diaries and letters and has presented the recipes and the attitudes towards them of the time. She joins me now in the Wellington Studio. 

10:30 How do you feed a festival?

We're in the middle of festival season at the moment in Aotearoa, but how on earth do you about feeding all the people who turn up to play at them!

Logan Birch and Diva Giles are business partners who amongst many, many other projects look after feeding the artists at the massive Rhythm and Vines music festival in Gisborne. Logan and Diva are up to their necks in plaster and paint building a new restaurant but Logan has made time to run down to our Auckland studio! 

10:55 A Māori Phrase a Day with Hemi Kelly

Three times a week, we'll check in with Hēmi Kelly, to learn some useful te reo Māori phrases you can use in your day-to-day life. Hemi's a lecturer in Te Ara Poutama - the Faculty of Māori & Indigenous Development at Auckland University of Technology, and his book A Māori Phrase a Day: 365 Phrases to Kickstart Your Reo was released on January 7.

11:05 Reading a book a week in 2020 

Stuff political journalist Henry Cooke has set himself an ambitious goal for 2020; to read a book a week, every week for the whole year. Is that possible? Especially for a political reporter in an election year? He joins us to lay out his road map. 

11:15 On the road with Tayi Tibble 

It's time for on the road, or today on the tracks, where we get a busy New Zealander in to take us on a trip, talk about thie 2019 and pick the music as they go! Today we're going Euro -railing with New Zealand poet, curator and editor Tayi Tibble!