11-year-old sushi fan gets his wish with eco-friendly sushi packaging

The young sushi fan wrote to his local store asking to consider using eco-friendly packaging. Photo / 123RF

By RNZ

An 11-year-old sushi fan who was fed up with the plastic packaging it came in has returned to his favourite store to find they've made a change.

Dominic Ogilvie from North Canterbury wrote to his local store asking them to consider more eco-friendly alternatives.

And after a self-imposed six-month sushi ban, he's now eating it again - because the packaging has changed.

He told First Up the sushi store gave their packaging a compostable bottom and a recyclable top.

"It's nice to know that all of the single use plastics that they were pouring into the environment before is no longer existing," Dominic said.

Going without sushi was hard though.

"I did it for about six months. So it was it quite nice to be able to eat some sushi again after six months."

He's now hoping other sushi stores will make the same changes.

"Yeah, it would be nice. It would be very good if they could. And it's also shown that people don't really mind paying 10c extra for their packaging to be eco-friendly."

He also hopes supermarkets will make changes too - he says it's hard to make a trip to one without buying things packaged in plastic.

News of Dominic's sushi success comes a day after new research revealed New Zealand households throw out 1.7 billion plastic containers in their rubbish and recycling bins each year.

The research, carried out by the Waste Management Institute, also found that almost 40 percent of plastic bottles and containers that could be recycled actually ended up in landfills.