Have you recently passed by the local Hakaru Re:Sort Transfer Station? You may have noticed a few big changes! Northland Waste has been busy revitalising the facility over winter, focusing on diverting more materials from landfills.
The changes include:
- A new customer-friendly area for commodity recycling.
- An onsite second-hand shop.
- Improved glass and green waste facilities.
- A focus on construction and demolition waste recovery.
We are incredibly proud of the site changes, which will support the public and our teams in their efforts to divert a significant amount of waste from landfills. With an enhanced focus on waste recovery at the site, we can't wait to share the changes with our community.
Our new focus:
The redesigned site allows traffic to flow easily around the centre for customers dropping off their recycling and clearer recycling to keep the product clean and correctly sorted. The revamped recycling centre allows a greater amount of household recycling and separation. Our sustainability team has designed innovative new signage for the recycling area, with examples of plastic grades clearly displayed to assist customers to recycle correctly.
We are thrilled with how the new recycling area looks and are already seeing the benefits, with less contamination and better grade separation.
In association with this, several other new initiatives at Hakaru Re:Sort are now operational. We heard there was a need for an on-site shop to sell reusable goods that would have otherwise ended up in landfills, so we have implemented a small resale shop with a vision to expand it in the near future. We know a second-chance shop for items too good to throw away is a big improvement; it's always mind-blowing what people throw out!
Additionally, we have implemented additional capacity for green waste and on-site glass bunkers with the support of a $30,000 grant from the Glass Packaging Forum. This allows our teams to store larger quantities of glass on-site, leading to carbon reducing transport efficiencies and safer handling.
Furthermore, the site now has an added focus on diverting construction and demolition waste from landfills through Northland Waste's Re:Fuel Your Wood Waste Scheme. We have implemented a new wood waste bin on-site for the public, and our teams now separate as much wood waste from local builders' skips as possible at the site. Wood waste from Hakaru is carted to Puwera, chipped and reused as an alternative fuel source in concrete production. This initiative has improved CO2 emissions, serving as a bio-friendly fuel alternative to burning coal.
We are very pleased to implement these changes for the Mangawhai community and thank our site partner Kaipara District Council for supporting us in improving and upgrading these local facilities for a more sustainable future.