The Government is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a new scheme aimed at recycling millions of plastic bags.
Plastic bags usually end up at the rubbish dump, but increasingly, used bags end up being recycled into park benches and even traffic bollards.
The Love NZ soft plastic recycling programme has bins in more than 200 stores and supermarkets across Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch. It has already saved 18 million bags from landfills, and now it has started operating in the capital, helped by a Government grant.
"We know that people in Wellington really want it because they've been emailing us and putting messages on our Facebook page to say come here, so here we are," says packaging forum project manager Lyn Mayes.
It's saved 70.6 million tonnes of soft plastics from the tip, which is instead shipped to Australia to be recycled.
"Our objective is to have 80 percent of the New Zealand population within 20 kilometres of a plastic soft recycling centre," says Environment Minister Nick Smith.
"Wellington is the next step along that way. We want to have that target met by 2018."
Recycling bins are being rolled out to 56 stores across the region, but Wellingtonians may take some convincing.
The packaging forum is now expecting 1 million soft plastic items every week, from cereal packets and toilet wrappers to the supermarket bag.
Newshub.
