SBN’s ‘Green Drinks’ show (responsible) plastic use can HELP a circular economy
Economate were fortunate to be invited to the Sustainable Business Network’s Green Drinks event at Flight Plastics. Here were heard from Flight Plastic’s Derek and Metal Art’s Karl on how their local Hutt Valley businesses are working both nationally and internationally to keep plastic circulating within a circular economy.
Metal Art create incredible and importantly highly durable ‘plastic timber’, used for park benches, boardwalks and sculptures. Flight plastics are a plastic recycling and re-manufacturing plant that processes up to 6,000 tons of plastic per year…. sadly that’s only 37 days worth of NZ recycled trash so there is much potential for them yet.
Crucially Flight’s Derek pointed out that the only way to maintain plastic’s ‘value’ within a circular economy is to actually purchase items using recycled plastic. Then recycle it, then buy it again etc etc. If consumers choose not to buy products using plastic packaging – then this breaks the chain of the circular economy notion. So, who’d have thought buying recycled plastic is crucial to keeping it in circulation. Mind blown!
Flight offer plastic as a raw material to their purchasers at the same cost as imported plastic…. now we ask, why is NZ still buying in from overseas virgin plastic? So if you see ‘Flight’ on the bottom of your strawberry punnet – rest easy. Buy with confidence knowing it’s recycled and recycle it again knowing that little piece of plastic is going back on it’s journey through the circular economy. Sweeet!
Thanks for the education and well done to both companies on keeping plastic where it should be – captured as a useful commodity and not discarded as ‘waste’.
For more information about SBN visit: https://sustainable.org.nz/
