100th carton recycling point reached in Nelson
A volunteer-run scheme that has diverted more than 200,000 food and beverage cartons from landfill in the Nelson region has been credited with helping reach a national recycling milestone.
The Packaging Forum said Grassroots Recycling’s latest community drop-off point for the cartons ‒ the shop, Organic Foods Nelson ‒ took to 100 the number of places where people could drop off the cartons for recycling nationwide.
The liquid paperboard cartons, used to contain things like longlife milks, juices and stocks, were not accepted in kerbside recycling.
The forum helped collect cartons across the country, and send them to companies in New Zealand that turned the containers into products such as building supplies.
The organisation said the drop-off point milestone was thanks to local “recycling legend” Jemima Jones.
Jones set up Grassroots Recycling in Nelson three years ago to help collect the cartons, after discovering that a Hamilton-based company called SaveBOARD recycled them.
She provided a locally-donated wheelie bin at Kinzett Terrace in Nelson for people to put the empty cartons in ‒ cut open and washed.
Other locals then offered to host community collection bins at different sites, with collection points now numbering 11 in the region, including the latest; Organic Foods Nelson on Collingwood St.
Jones estimated the total amount of cartons collected by Grassroots Recycling was 210,300, about 60,000 of which came through a new scheme with volunteers collecting the cartons directly from local cafés.
The Packaging Forum funded most of the initiative’s bins and reimbursed the cost of getting the cartons to Motueka, where volunteers baled the containers at family-run sustainable recycling depot, Weka Peckers.
The forum also paid for the bales to be freighted to Hamilton.
It was “lovely” to be recognised for her part in the recycling efforts, said Jones, whose day job was managing the administration team at Sports Therapy.
“It feels really good to be making a difference and to be able to provide solutions for people in Nelson.”
But it wouldn’t be happening without a team of about 40 local volunteers, young and old, and willingness in the community to embrace the scheme, she said.
Organic Foods Nelson co-manager Damien Roddis said the family-run business unwittingly became the 100th collection point, after contacting Jones about a post she made online about Grassroots Recycling’s bins around town.
Believing in sustainability, and selling some of the cartons itself, the store seemed a logical place to drop off the containers, he said.
“About a week later she had a bin here.”
Some people come in to drop off “armloads” of the cartons, he said.
“Better than going to landfill … it just feels like you’re closing the circle just a tiny bit more.”
Other new collection points across the region included NMDHB Day Services (Stoke), Buenavista Cafe (Hardy Street, Nelson), Sports Therapy (Collingwood Street).
Grassroots Recycling had received grants from both Nelson City and Tasman District council, and Jones said she dreamt of getting her own carton baler in Nelson.
The Packaging Forum said 1.3 million cartons were collected through its nationwide food and beverage carton recycling scheme in the year to March, with collection points from Ngunguru in Northland to Scott Base in Antarctica.
The cartons were sent to processors in New Zealand such as saveBOARD, which recycled them into new, sustainable building products, retail infrastructure and other products, it said.
By Warren Gamble, Nelson Mail
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