What’s the go with recycling in Nelson?

You may have seen a recent Fair Go piece about public place recycling in Nelson Tasman. Public place recycling should NOT be confused with household recycling – kerbside recycling collected in yellow bins and blue crates is very successful in Nelson Tasman with low contamination rates.

Residents do a fantastic job at making sure that the maximum gets recycled by sorting clean numbers 1,2 & 5 plastics, flattened cardboard and tins and cans in their yellow bins, and clean glass (lids removed) in their blue crates. The Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Richmond services Nelson City and Tasman District Councils and is one of the largest of its kind in the country. The MRF processes and recovers an average of 4.52kg of plastic per person per year in the Nelson region alone – that’s the equivalent of 4.85 million plastic soft drink bottles per year. Recovered plastics are sorted and baled at the MRF, before being transported to New Zealand recyclers such as Flight Plastics and used to make new plastic containers. Glass is transported to Visy Glass in Auckland to be made into new glass bottles (glass can be recycled infinitely).

What is public place recycling?
Public place recycling are any recycling bins that are in the street or in any place for the public to use when they are out and about. In Nelson we only have a handful of these bins available publicly, and they make up a very tiny percentage of what we recycle in Nelson. The bins were introduced as a trial with some funding that was part of the Rugby World Cup 2011.

Why don’t we have more public place recycling?
The short answer is contamination. Unfortunately, our experience is that the contamination rates for public place recycling bins is much higher than residential recycling, it can be as high as 80% and a contaminated bin ends up needing to be sent to landfill rather than recycled. You may have seen a recent episode of Fair Go that shows Nelson is not alone in high contamination rates for public place recycling. 

What is Council doing instead?
Public place recycling is a tiny amount of the total recycling produced by Nelson so we are focusing on what does work – household kerbside recycling – and looking at ways to make it easier to recycle when you are out and about. 

The example shown in Fair Go of a Council event shows the education we are doing to help people recycle right. We are also supporting and community-led projects like repair cafes and helping manufacturers to look at the waste they produce by providing grants as part of our Rethink Waste programme – you will have seen Chia Sisters featured as part of the Fair Go piece who received a Council grant to purchase a kegerator to enable them to provide a juice refill service.

What can you do if you are out and about and want to recycle?
Think firstly about what you are buying and how it’s packaged – remember you can’t recycle that disposable coffee cup so bring your own reusable cups. Look for products you can refill. You can also take your recycling home with you and pop it in your bin.

Go to nelson.govt.nz/recycle/recycling-frequently-asked-questions for more information.