Soft plastic recycling kerbside trial: Nelson
Thanks Nelson, we're now at capacity so registrations have closed
The Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme is running a kerbside recycling trial with selected streets and households in Nelson from October 2024, for approximately six months. Nelson is the first city in New Zealand to be a part of this groundbreaking initiative, and the Nelson City Council is supporting the trial and its aims to make it easier for the community to reduce waste and increase recycling rates. The trial will be 100 percent funded by industry (Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme members) and is not part of Council’s kerbside recycling collection. Enviro NZ will gather and bale the soft plastic collected from registered households and deliver to Future Post in Blenheim to be recycled into fence posts for local vineyards and farms, as well as garden beds.
The purpose of this trial is to explore the viability of recycling soft plastic packaging at kerbside, and whether this collection model is economically viable and deliverable at scale. Other considerations will include household willingness and community demand for the collection model, contamination levels and cost effectiveness.
Ultimately the Scheme wants to make it easier for Kiwis to recycle soft plastics at home, and we hope this trial will provide us with valuable information required to inform the future scope of the collection model.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nelson residents living in postcode area 7111 need to register in the below form to participate. Once you have registered you will be sent an email with more information about the scheme’s orange soft plastic collection bags.
You will receive a pack of 20 orange bags two weeks prior to the commencement of the collection service.
The orange bags are ‘singlet style’ to allow a secure tie once the bag is filled. They are designed to be hung on a handle or in a pantry or line a small bin in order to easily add your soft plastic packaging. Only add full bags to your recycling bin (no need to add to each fortnightly collection unless the bags are full).
The Packaging Forum’s Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme is funding this trial at no cost to participating households or to Nelson Council. The trial period will provide valuable information to the scheme about how effective it has been in reducing household plastic waste and what changes would be needed to optimise efficiencies and recovery rates.
Soft plastic packaging is excluded from kerbside collections following the standardisation of kerbside collections. This is because loose soft plastic materials jam up equipment at the recycling plant.
The soft plastic recycling scheme has been monitoring trials of soft plastic collections in separate bags at kerbside in Australia and the UK and this trial in Nelson is an opportunity for us to introduce a similar “bag” system here. We are using an “orange” bag because orange it the waste colour associated with plastic packaging.
We want to make it easier for people to recycle soft plastics at home and we hope this trial will provide us with valuable information.
All soft plastic collected in Nelson will be recycled at the Future Post plant in Blenheim. Future Post use a mix of soft and rigid plastic to make posts, fence rails and garden frames.
Soft plastic packaging that displays the Recycle at Store logo or the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL )“Return to Store” logo. Tip: Use the “scrunch” test as a guide – soft plastics tend to stay scrunched in a ball, hard plastics go back to their shape or can’t be scrunched.
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Bags are delivered in packs of 20 which should be plenty for the six month trial period with fortnightly collections. If you do run out of bags, contact - info@packagingforum.org.nz
Enviro NZ will collect the orange bags in your blue bin the day after your blue (glass) bin has been emptied. If your blue bin has been emptied of glass on a Wednesday then EnviroNZ will collect the orange bag with soft plastic in it on a Thursday. If your blue bin has been emptied of glass on a Thursday then the orange bag with soft plastic in the blue bin will be collected on a Friday. The soft plastic collection in the Nelson Trial is the same week as your recycling is collected from the blue bin. Your blue bin with the orange bag of soft plastic packaging must be placed kerbside on or before 7 am on the day of collection.
No. This trial is for households only as our primary focus is on assessing household recycling behaviour.
Businesses in Nelson that are interested in collection of their soft plastic waste should contact admin@packagingforum.org.nz . The scheme will advise on costs for this service for business.
Only residents in the 7111-postcode area can register for this trial. This trial will test different aspects of the process and it is important to keep trial participants at a level we can manage.
The trial will initially be for six months, with a review after six months to assess how effective it has been in reducing household plastic waste, and what changes would be needed to optimise efficiencies and recovery rates.
We hope to add 1 or 2 more councils to the trial to test different collection systems and processes.
This trial is being run by The Packaging Forum, and is not part of Council’s kerbside recycling collection
This is just a trial to test kerbside recycling of soft plastic, and 1000 is an ideal sample size.
