Plastic Fantastic

Good things in the pipeline

A PILOT project is under way to recycle plastic waste from vineyards in Marlborough. The collaboration between local water engineering and management firm SWE and irrigation company RX Plastics will see polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from vineyards and projects around Marlborough recycled and reused, with polyethylene (PE) to follow suit soon.

“We’ve been working with SWE since they first opened their doors,” says RX Plastics territory manager Steve Pitts. When SWE managing director Stephen Leitch approached him about reducing waste to landfill, it put things in motion, he says. “We’re all very excited to have this pilot now underway here in Marlborough.”

RX Plastics have set up the pilot system at SWE’s headquarters, where the products are cleaned and sorted into categories. Once checked, they are collected and returned to RX Plastics’ Tinwald factory for regrinding and repurposing. The PVC is reground and made into other products. The PE material will also be reground and pelletised, ready to be used in a myriad of other new products.

The work reduces waste to landfill from these products by an estimated 99%, with the rubber rings from within the PVC sockets the only remaining part not able to be recycled at this stage. “It’s still early days, and at this point we aetrialling it with SWE here in Marlborough,” says Steve. “However, I’m really confident this is going to be successful - and at that point we’d be looking to open it up nationally to our clients.”

Stephen says SWE’s motivation to decrease waste came to the forefront when they became Toitū carbonzero accredited in 2017. The company has nine active “shift projects”, and another half dozen already completed, which “shift” SWE from its current emissions output to a reduced one.

“Our shift projects us from where we are now, to a place that better meets our mission. An example of one of our active shift projects is to have zero waste to landfill,” he says. “We have been working hard with all our suppliers to look at how we can reduce, reuse and recycle – and this pilot project with RX Plastics came out of that work.” He says dripline and drippers are not included in the scope of the pilot project, but SWE are exploring a trial with another supplier to deal with that.

RX Plastics was also looking for ways to improve its environmental footprint, “and we want to support our clients’ sustainability goals too”, says Steve. “Our products are designed to be used for 50 to 100 years plus. And if we can recycle them at end-of-life, well that completes the circle perfectly.”