A new agricultural plastics recycling campaign, partly funded by the Sustainable Initiatives Fund Trust, aimed at Canterbury farmers has recently been launched by Agpac. Agpac are running a new recycling scheme called Plasback – on farm collection of agricultural plastic wastes such as baleage wrap and silage sheets, polypropylene bags and HDPE Drums. The education campaign includes a helpful and instructional brochure for famers showing them how to recycle each type of waste stream which will be mailed to farmers in Canterbury as well as radio and press advertising and is part of the Plasback Product Stewardship Scheme.
Farm feed wrapped in Baleage
This new campaign not only educates farmers on who can take their waste but how to handle it while it is on the farm such as the importance of triple rinsing HDPE drums and not including balenet or twine in the balewrap collection bins. Plasback also offers a recovery programme for the return of 100 and 200L containers for reuse.
The Plasback Product Stewardship scheme for recycling farm plastics will go a long way to helping to clean up Canterbury’s countryside, reduce hazardous toxins and chemicals from the soil (from burying the plastic) and the air (from burning), reducing waste to landfill and recycling the approx. 4000 tonnes of LLDPE (Linear Low Density Polyethylene) used as crop packaging on New Zealand farms each year. The recycled plastic will be turned in pellets that can be reused as new resin stock for plastic production.
For more information on the Plasback Education Campaign visit www.plasback.co.nz.
