New Zealand’s glass recycling rate was down by 2% to 66.4% in the 2011/2012 year.
Its Glass Packaging Forum said the reason for this is that the Forum only records recovered glass which is processed. In the past year the unprocessed stockpile at contractor’s locations increased to 18,000 tonnes, which is intended for inclusion in next year’s recovery figures.
The Forum’s General Manager, John Webber, said there were major gains in the percentage of high quality glass collected for the use in the manufacturer of new containers.
Glass for high value uses increased by 15% over the previous year, to 114,666 tonnes or 71% of the total glass recycled.
Data provided by 55% members (by weight) shows that companies are monitoring their use of glass and that on average 0.49kg glass is used for 1kg or litre of product.
Separately, in the first six months of the current financial year $43,038.09 was allocated to projects to increase the end of life collection of glass containers through investment in glass bunkers, pods and bottle banks.
This includes money to improve the glass storage area at Kaipara Refuse Ltd and in turn the quality of the recovered glass and funding to Te Maunga Resource Recovery Park Tauranga to also improve its capability for collecting high volumes of quality glass
