Send those supermarket bags around again

It is now possible to recycle plastic supermarket shopping bags as part of the normal City Council kerbside recycling collection.

Richard Lloyd, chair of the Real Recycling team and chief executive of the Recovered Materials Foundation (RMF) says there have been more and more calls for supermarket bags to be recycled.

“But, until we had a market for them, we couldn’t accept them at the kerbside,” he says.

The RMF will sort the collected bags and send them to Christchurch company Range Industries, which has devised a process called thermofusion ™ to turn the supermarket bags into durable plastic planks suitable for boxing, pallets and fenceposts.

The supermarket shopping bags are packed into woolpacks at the RMF sorting depot. Between 60 and 70 woolpacks make a bale containing about 25,000 bags and weighing around 800kg. At Range Industries, that bale makes up to 1000m of plastic planking (approx 100mm x 18mm).

“Thermo-fusion™ is a process developed especially with plastic bags in mind,” says Matthew Darby, managing director of Range Industries.

“It’s estimated that nearly every person in New Zealand throws out one plastic shopping bag every day. That’s equivalent to 900 tonnes of bags going to landfill every month. We can divert that from the waste stream, process it and produce items traditionally made from wood.”

Real Recycling is a partnership between Christchurch City and Waimakariri District councils, Onyx Group and the RMF.

• For more information about recycling visit www.ccc.govt.nz/recycling or call 941 8830.