Tauranga kindy wins garden bed made of recycled toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes

Greerton Village kindy kids Imogen Hoolihan, Momoka Philson and McKenzie Heerdegen. Photo/file

A Tauranga kindy's recycling efforts have paid dividends after it won a garden bed in a national recycling competition.

Greerton Village Kindergarten won one of five garden beds made from recycled toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and other oral-care packing in The Colgate Better World Recycling Project.

The competition ran between August 7 and October 29, 2017 and was open to pre-, primary, special, intermediate and secondary schools, non-profit clubs and community groups collecting oral care waste.

It was part of a national recycling initiative run by Colgate and global recycling company TerraCycle.

Kerry Neas from Greerton Village Kindergarten said the kindy had been involved in the Oral Care Recycling Programme - a year-round initiative that has been running for some time and in which everyone at the centre gets really involved.

"We signed up and we started recycling all of our toothpaste tubes and any toothpaste waste; boxes etcetera, and we send it into them and we get points for the kindergarten, then when you get a certain amount of points you might win a prize," Neas said.

Previously the centre won $1000 but this time they won a $1500 garden bed made from the recycled materials.

"We're absolutely stoked because we didn't have any vegetable gardens within the vicinity for the children, they were all round the back, now we've got two garden beds and a little low ground garden that we've dug," Neas said.

Neas said that all 40 children at the centre and their families are right on board.

"We do Facebook posts about recycling and that sort of thing and everybody brings in their oral care waste, even kids who have gone off to school often bring in a bag of toothpaste rubbish sometimes and pass it onto us," she said.

General Manager of TerraCycle New Zealand, Jean Bailliard, said that it's really encouraging to see local schools, businesses and community organisations signing up for our programmes and championing sustainability.

"Congratulations to Greerton Village Kindergarten on a stellar result – we love seeing how enthusiastic they are about recycling," Bailliard said.

The kindy plan to continue their recycling efforts and hopefully win more prizes.

"The company have branched out to do a whole lot of other recycling too, like yoghurt tubes and different products that you can recycle so we might look at that in the future too," Neas said.