Grant helps lift Ohakune glass recycling rates

Losing recyclable glass to landfill is a thing of the past at the Waimarino Recycling Centre in Ohakune thanks to a grant from the Glass Packaging Forum.

Ethical Waste, which has taken on the site management from March, identified the large skips used for collecting glass bottles and jars as a problem in terms of contamination.

Ethical Waste Owner Sam Gray says the size of the skips meant contamination couldn’t be removed by staff. This meant some glass which should have been recycled ended up in landfill.

However, a forklift purchased with the help of a $10,200 grant from the GPF means smaller skips can be used, which can be cleared of contamination.

“The new forklift enables us to move our public drop-off area for recycling into an area that has shelter to display education, as well as remove contamination from the glass recycling skips,” Sam says.

Ethical Waste’s education plan has the main objective of increasing the volume and quality of glass recovered in the Ruapehu District and on to Visy Glass (the country’s only glass container manufacturer) in Auckland, to be recycled. Ethical Waste plans to create educational posters which will be rotated through the six transfer stations in the district, Sam says.

GPF Scheme Manager Dominic Salmon says improving the quality and quantity of glass available for recycling is the core object of the GPF’s product stewardship scheme. “Helping recyclers like Ethical Waste is one of the main ways we achieve this.”