What happens to your recycling?
All of your recycling gets a second life. Neat, eh?! Its next location after our sorting process depends on what it is.
Your recycling comes from your home or drop-off points around the city to our recycling centre in Awapuni
There it's sorted, baled, and then prepared to be sent off for recycling.
Watch: What we do with the recycling we collect from your home
These videos show our sorting process for your orange-lid wheelie bin and glass crate.
Where to next?
Paper and cardboard
Some cardboard gets collected and recycled back into cardboard boxes in Auckland (Oji). Things like white paper, newspapers, magazines and cardboard packaging are made into fruit trays and egg cartons in Hawke's Bay (Hawk Packaging).
Glass
Glass can be recycled over and over again. Glass collected in Palmy is taken to Visy's plant in Auckland where contamination from things like labels and neck rings is removed. The glass then gets recycled into new bottles at OI, also in Auckland.
Check out part of the glass recycling process in this video
We partner with the local and family-owned companies, Higgins Concrete and Hirock Quarries to transform our mixed waste glass into a valuable resource. The glass is crushed and used as an aggregate in concrete, roads and footpaths.
Plastic
Number 1: Clear PET (water bottles, soft drink bottles) gets sent to Pact Packaging in Wellington to be made into a variety of recycled packaging products, including meat trays.
Number 2: Clear HDPE is recycled here in Palmerston North by Aotearoa NZ Made and is used in various applications, including irrigation pipes. Coloured plastics are recycled into black rubbish bags that are used to line the city's street bins.
Number 5: Palmy is lucky to have a local recycler (Aotearoa NZ Made) to process polypropylene. It's used by a Whanganui manufacturer to make a variety of bins. Some is also used as an alternative to steel in concrete reinforcement.
Steel
Our local metal recycling broker Macauley Metals arranges recycling of some steel on shore, and some gets sent overseas.
Aluminium
This is currently our most valuable commodity. Some is recycled locally, and some is sent offshore. Macauley Metals is our broker.
Batteries
These are collected by our contractor E-cycle who send them offshore to be processed. E-cycle comply with Basel and Stockholm conventions regarding international shipment of hazardous material. Components from different types of batteries are recovered in different ways for a variety of repurposing.
Car batteries
These are collected by a local company, Dominion Trading. Used car batteries are sent to lead recycling plants in the Pacific, under Basel Convention terms.
E-waste
This is collected by our contractor E-cycle. E-waste dropped off at our Ferguson Street Recycling Centre is sent to Auckland where it is dismantled. Valuable commodities such as gold and copper are retrieved. However some components, like the plastic housing, are unable to be recycled and must be sent to landfill. Some e-waste is also dismantled locally in Palmy.
Motor oil
This is collected by ExOil and the waste oil is used in bitumen.
Cooking oil
Refined in Wellington, where it's used in animal food and cosmetics. We use vat oil for this, but there are a number of local companies who arrange this.
Carseats
Our contractor 3R arranges for these to be recycled. Carseats are dismantled and polypropylene, metal, and webbing straps are retrieved and recycled or repurposed.
Chemical waste
Our contractor for chemical waste is 3R. There are a variety of different chemicals collected which need to be processed in different ways depending on their active ingredients. Chemicals processed onshore are stabilised before being sent to landfill. Materials sent overseas (to France) are disposed of via a high temperature incineration plant. Some are processed onshore and some offshore.
Polystyrene
Once you drop polystyrene off at our Ferguson Street Recycling Centre, it's taken to our local recycler, E-Cycle, who melt it down to about 10% of its original size. It’s then recycled into things like picture frames and decorative mouldings.
Tyres
Tyres are trucked to Cambridge where they’re shredded into granules and used to make things like artificial turf, roads, gym floors and playground mats.
Tetra Pak
Once you drop off your used cartons and containers to our recycling centre on Ferguson Street, we send them to SaveBOARD’s manufacturing plant in Hamilton. These items are then turned into low-carbon building materials, like the gib board in the photo.
