Auckland plastic recycled in New Zealand quintupled with new sorter, waste to landfill reduced

The amount of plastic from Auckland that is sent to landfill and abroad for recycling will be reduced thanks to an improvement in the city’s recycling sorting facilities.

The new optical sorting equipment, installed at Auckland City Council’s Visy recycling facility, means that up to 35% less plastic will need to be shipped overseas for recycling.

On an unusual tour, Visy, a multinational recycling company, opened its doors to journalists Thursday to take a look at how the city’s recycling is done.

Every day around 600 tons of recyclable materials are collected from across the city.

Annually, around 135,000 tons are collected from households, and plastic accounts for about six percent, by weight.

The most important component is paper and cardboard with 40%, glass with 39% and aluminum and steel with 3%.

All materials start out unsorted on a conveyor belt where obviously non-recyclable items are disposed of by hand. These have included everything from diapers to yard waste and even dead animals.

They then move through a maze of conveyor belts and sorting machines, which remove more contaminants and break down each material into specific components.

About 12 percent of it is contaminated, including general waste and things like dirty plastic, and it goes straight to landfill.

Another problem, however, was in the different types of plastics, which are from 1 to 7 and all have unique characteristics and levels of recyclability.

Before Covid, the vast majority of New Zealand plastic was sent abroad for recycling, often in bales of different types.

Exports peaked in 2016 with just 50,000 tonnes shipped abroad, before China closed its doors over environmental concerns and exports fell to just over 30,000 tonnes in 2018.

Overseas exports rebounded last year with new markets in Malaysia and Indonesia, however non-governmental organizations have expressed great concern that plastic is simply being burned or dumped along already polluted waterways as it these countries were already awash in plastic waste.

New Zealand’s previous largest overseas market was Indonesia, which received over 12,000 tonnes of our waste in 2018, double the number in 2017.

But Covid-19 saw foreign markets shut down and a drop in oil prices made producing virgin plastic products much cheaper than recycling.

Auckland Council General Manager Waste Solutions Parul Sood said this all meant that in recent months some plastics had to go to landfill in Auckland because there was no market for them.

However, the new optical sorting machine, which uses light and near-infrared technology to differentiate plastics and a blast of air to place them in the correct flow, would ensure that 99 percent of the 7,700 tons of recyclable plastic that arrive each year can be recycled.

It also meant that more could be done on land.

Previously, only about 6.5 percent of Auckland’s plastics were recycled in New Zealand.

But with the new sorting technology, up to 35 percent could be recycled here, and local plastic recycler Astron Sustainability, which supported the upgrade, now expects to receive roughly 2,200 tonnes of No. 2 and No. 5 plastic as a result.

Previously, No. 2 plastic went to foreign markets and No. 5 plastic has been going to landfills since June.

This material could now be used for a variety of products, from flower pots to sewer pipes.

About 40 percent of the number 1 clear plastic is recycled by Flight Plastics in New Zealand.

Fonterra financially supported the new sorter, which according to Global Sustainability Director Carolyn Mortland reflected the fact that the company produced more than 50 million plastic bottles of milk each year.

“Kiwis love milk and now they can tell that those bottles are recycled here in New Zealand.”

The company recently launched a milk bottle made from sugarcane resin, which was still recyclable, instead of petroleum.

Other companies have gone further and produced their bottles from recycled plastics, which Mortland said was a technology the company was looking into as well.

Auckland Councilor Richard Hills, chair of the Committee on Environment and Climate Change, said that while the new sorting technology was “exciting,” the key was to continue reducing plastic use in the first place.

“It’s definitely a big eye-opener to see all that machinery running constantly, and that’s just one waste day from Auckland.

“Developing the capacity for more than a third of our plastics to remain in New Zealand is a
great milestone that can reduce our emissions.

“In addition to improving our recycling, we continue to encourage people to avoid single-use plastics whenever possible because it is better for our environment to reject and reuse rather than relying solely on recycling.

“Less plastic in our recycling means that more of it can stay within New Zealand rather than need a foreign market.”

Rigid mixed plastic packaging 3, 4, 6 and 7, which is less than one percent of Auckland’s plastic, will continue to be sent to landfill because there is no viable market in the world today.

“Manufacturers are strongly encouraged to stop using these difficult to recycle plastics
grocery supplies, “Hills said.

However, Visy would continue to seek solutions for these plastics so that Auckland households could continue to put them in recycling bins while they worked to find a solution.