Before the March recycling day, I sent out messages saying that at the Ngaio Recycling Days, we are moving to only accepting tetrapaks which have been cut, opened flat and washed clean. Thank you to everyone who received the message and brought in flat contributions.
To transition to these tighter rules – I did accept cartons that not been cut open, and added those to the collection, after a quick slice to meet the recycling programme’s request. However this week when I dropped off at Earthlink, the tetrapaks were being inspected, and unfortunately the first box that I selected contained boxes that had old contents that were crusty or moldy, or still wet. My whole consignment of 28KG was therefore rejected and had to be brought home. The contamination reduces the quality of the end product, and adds unnecessary weight to transporting to the processing factory.
At home I went through all of the collection to sort out those which did not meet the recycling grade (see the recycling instructions in my next post above). Unfortunately around 4kg went to landfill – much because it was contaminated by other packs in the collection.
Can you tell which of the two packs above went to rubbish and which went back to Earthlink?
From the next collection therefore – we will only accept for recycling, those tetrapaks which come to us cut flat, clean, and dry.
And yes – the pack on the left is the model example of what we are looking for.