The first New Zealand recycling plant to process long-life beverage cartons is now converting up to 4000 tonnes of waste year into environmentally sustainable building materials, filling a gap in local recycling infrastructure.
saveBOARD, a venture backed by Freightways, Tetra Pak and Closed Loop, has brought this waste-to-building-material technology to New Zealand, with its plant becoming fully operational at the end of last year.
saveBOARD receives used long-life beverage cartons, soft plastics and coffee cups from large food and beverage companies wanting to meet ambitious waste reduction targets, building a circular economy for these waste materials and creating up to 200,000 construction boards a year.
Previously, long-life cartons could only be recycled through kerbside collection in parts of Auckland, which was confusing for consumers and problematic for industry in communicating recyclability messages. However, it’s hoped that investment in improving local sorting facilities and the capacity to build further plants will mean kerbside collections feed into these recycling processes in future.
