KEY POINTS:
Residents of Auckland and Manukau cities are unwittingly sending tonnes of recyclable paper to landfill because they are transferring it to the new big wheelie bins in plastic bags.
Staff at a new high-tech recycling facility in Onehunga are having to pull the bags out of the recyclable rubbish.
Plastic bags cannot be recycled at the plant and the workers are not allowed to empty them for health and safety reasons so the whole lot is diverted to landfill.
Michael Franks, general manager of Visy Recycling NZ, said 4 per cent of the material coming into the plant had to go to landfill and plastic bags made up the majority of that.
"We largely attribute this to the fact that people are still used to putting their paper and cardboard out for recycling in a plastic bag. With the new co-mingled collection [all recyclables in the same bin] residents don't realise it's actually counter-productive."
Mr Franks said the idea was to provide a more user-friendly way of recycling more items. Such items were plastics grade 1-7 from the kitchen, bathroom and laundry, glass bottles and jars, aluminium foil, trays and cans, steel cans, paper and cardboard.
He said recyclables were sorted using the latest technology and the priority was staff safety through reducing human contact with the materials as much as possible.
"This is a huge step forward from the old collection methodology. When plastic bags come through the plant we need to treat them like a health and safety hazard both for our staff and the plant equipment."
If residents wanted to recycle their plastic bags, the best thing to do was return them to a take-back receptacle at most supermarkets. "Don't put them in their recycling bin."
