Auckland’s sorting of its household recyclables is about to get a boost, with Visy undertaking an upgrade of its Onehunga Materials Recovery Facility.
Built in 2008, the sorting facility will be implementing new technology to help it increase the quality and diversity of recycled paper and cardboard to be sold in ANZ markets.
The upgrade gets underway on 12 August and will take about eight weeks to complete. During this time, the facility will be closed, but Visy has assured that there will be no disruption to kerbside collections, which will be operating as usual.
While some of the materials collected during this period will be required to go to landfill, alternative arrangements have been made to keep levels to a minimum, including processing some recycling at a nearby facility, and undertaking recycling of commercial glass.
“The facility is being upgraded with a $16.6 million Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF) grant to improve the accuracy of our recycling, resulting in better products and less contamination,” said Parul Sood, waste solutions general manager at Auckland Council.
“It’s exciting for Auckland to have such an up-to-date facility that is going a long way towards reducing the amount of waste to landfill, and ensuring we can recycle as much as possible. It’s a win for not only residents, but also the environment.”
According to Auckland Council, the investment will, in the longer-term, help more recycling materials be used in New Zealand, rather than overseas, with a recent upgrade to the plastic sorting equipment at the facility able to keep a third of the plastics in the country.
It said that further investment is also needed within other recycling processing facilities, such as for paper, to create materials that can be used in local manufacturing.
“Paper and cardboard materials are one of the common recyclables collected from households, making up around 40 per cent of what the facility processes each year,” explained Sood.
“The total processing capacity of the recycling plant will increase by 28 per cent – from 140,000 to 180,000 tonnes per annum, and improve the quality of sorted material, which provides some security in a changing market.
“It will also mean more diverse recycling streams, such as more plastic grades and cardboard being sorted from paper, creating more sought-after material and getting our sorting accuracy standard to 98 per cent.”
In keeping with the spirit of the facility, as much as possible of the old machinery that is being dismantled will be reused and the remainder recycled.
