Soft plastic recycling bins coming to NZ supermarkets

New Zealand’s Packaging Forum has announced an initiative that will enable shoppers to dispose of their used soft plastic bags in special recycling bins located at supermarkets and retail premises. The objective of the project is to provide access to recycling for soft plastics for over 70% of New Zealanders.

Lyn Mayes, the manager of the Public Place Recycling Scheme, noted that New Zealanders use over 1.6 billion plastic bags in the home every year — yet soft plastic bags are not currently collected for recycling by councils because they can contaminate the recycling process.

“The new project will take all soft plastic bags including bread bags, frozen food bags, toilet paper packaging, confectionery and biscuit wrap, chip bags, pasta and rice bags, courier envelopes, shopping bags, sanitary hygiene packaging — basically anything made of plastic which can be scrunched into a ball,” she explained.

“Customers can bring their used soft plastics back to store and put them in the recycling bin. This will be collected from store by REDcycle, who also run the program in Australia.”

The REDcycle recycling program invites consumers to gather together all their single-use shopping bags, as well as food and grocery packaging that isn’t able to be recovered via kerbside collection, and take them to their nearest supermarket drop-off point next time they visit. The collected soft plastic material is used to manufacture recycled-plastic items such as outdoor furniture, signage and traffic control products suitable for use in schools, parks and other public spaces.

“Initially the materials will be sent back to Australia, where they are made into park benches and fitness circuits for playgrounds, until there are facilities in NZ … that can process these products,” Mayes said. “One of the really great opportunities is to make recycling bins out of these soft plastics so we can buy them back for our Public Place Recycling Scheme.”

The project will be trialled at New World, PAK’nSAVE and The Warehouse stores in Auckland by the end of September, before rolling out to Countdown stores in Hamilton with further expansion to Wellington, Canterbury, Otago, Bay of Plenty, Manawatu and other regions over three years. It has already received support from major brands — including Cottonsoft, Huggies, Kleenex, New Zealand Post, Pams, SunRice, Astron and Elldex Plastics — with many others committed to joining the program.

“This project shows what can be achieved by industry working in partnership with Central Government,” said Andrew Hewett, chair of the Public Place Recycling Scheme.

“This is a voluntary, industry-led initiative and a true product stewardship model where everyone involved in the life cycle of a product — manufacturers, distributors and consumers — chooses to share responsibility for the best end-of-life outcome.”