It’s been a hot and thirsty summer with a big demand for beverages at events around the country. That means a lot of glass bottles which can be collected and recycled into new wine, beer or soft drinks bottles ready for next summer!
The Glass Packaging Forum (the Forum) has contributed $85000 towards summer events and tourist locations in the first quarter of 2013 as part of its annual investment to support and increase glass recovery. These include the Classic Hits Winery Tour, the Horse of the Year Show, the Lantern Festivals, Tauranga’s Jazz Festival and community support to assist with Waihi’s summer visitors.
The Forum promotes recycling under the Love NZ brand which it manages as part of a nationwide public place recycling initiative funded by local and central government and industry.
John Webber, General Manager of the Glass Packaging Forum says different events generate different types of recycling needs and so adaptability and a degree of pragmatism is necessary:
“There is obviously more glass consumed at concerts at wineries but glass has less of a presence at other events such as the Lantern Festivals which we have sponsored for two years in Auckland and this year in Christchurch. Our role is to promote and assist glass recycling with the ultimate goal of getting the glass back to the furnace in Auckland to be made into new glass containers or finding local uses for the glass if this isn’t practical or economic.”
“We’ve supported the Classic Hits Winery Tour for four years now and this year glass recycling was up around 20% over last year from the 17 concerts. Whilst we are a glass focussed organisation, we also collect paper, plastic and cans from each venue as part of our management of the Love NZ programme. 80% of the packaging consumed at these concerts was recycled which is an incredible achievement.”
“This year we introduced mobile glass bottle banks at the Horse of the Year Show in Hastings. These make perfect sense for events which generate large quantities of glass over several days as colour separating the glass increases its value and ensures it is “furnace ready”.”
“ It’s not just events which create lots of opportunities for recycling but also summer holiday resorts which attract hundreds of “bach owners” over the holidays so we have been working on a trial with Waste Watchers and Western Bay of Plenty District Council to introduce colour coded glass recycling bags.
“These events represent just a fraction of the hundreds of summer shows hosted around New Zealand each year but resulted in around 34 tonnes of containers being recycled equivalent to around 84,000 glass containers and 124,000 cans and plastic drinks bottles. We work with 28 councils who are partners in the Love NZ public place recycling programme and with community groups and others who want to see recycling become standard at all events. People are used to
recycling at home but away from home it’s often a different story and through partnerships we hope to make it easy to recycle where ever you are.”
