Avocado grower, Ray Woolley from Kaitaia, is delighted to have won the Suzuki DR200 Trojan farmbike Agrecovery offered as an incentive to draw new participants to the recycling programme. On hearing he’d won the ‘Kick start your winter clean up’ promotion, Ray exclaimed “I’m 76 years old and it’s the first time I’ve won anything of value. It’s fantastic news!” Ray first read about Agrecovery when the avocado industry magazine “Avoscene” ran a story on the autumn motorbike promotion. “My wife Margaret and I have always had green principles, recycling through the council when they first introduced recycling depots in the early 80’s. “We bought the avocado orchard in Houhora as a retirement block and quickly realised the need to ...
Source: Crop Life International Product packaging plays an essential role in ensuring that crop protection products are delivered safely to the intended customers. The containers in which products are sold are part of the plant science industry’s life-cycle approach to product stewardship. The industry is committed to ensuring that all containers are treated and disposed of safely and appropriately. Since the early nineties, the crop protection industry has implemented empty container collection programs in over 40 countries and more than 25 pilot programs in Eastern Europe as well as developing countries have now been initiated. Farmers in countries where there is a Container Management Programme return 66% of all plastic containers shipped. The majority of this plastic is recycled into ...
By the end of this month, New Zealand farmers and growers will have recycled one million kg of plastic containers through the Agrecovery Rural Recycling programme. “It’s a significant milestone for sustainability in the primary sector, so we’re celebrating by giving away a new Suzuki farm bike,” says Agrecovery Foundation Chair Adrienne Wilcock, a dairy farmer from Matamata who represents Dairy NZ on the Foundation. In the ‘Kick start your winter clean up’, anyone who recycles with Agrecovery before the end of June will go into the draw to win a Suzuki DR200 Trojan (RRP $5995), a popular model ideal for most rural applications. The Agrecovery container programme started in 2007, offering farmers and growers free recycling of plastic containers ...
Our target, your challenge… Over 8 years Agrecovery members have recycled nearly 1 million kilogrammes of plastic containers. Congratulations if you have contributed to this result! Our current target is to collect 230 tonnes in the 12 months ending June 2015. By 2017 we’re aiming for 330 tonnes, or about 50% of all the packaging sold by our participating brands. We won’t achieve these targets with a ‘business as usual approach’, so we’re asking all industry members to accept our challenge to make burning and burying plastic a thing of the past, and get recycling! How can you help reach Target 230? Already recycling? Great, but are all your containers eligible for free recycling? Could you encourage other suppliers to ...
The first two container collection events for the 2014/2015 financial year got off to a cracking start.
More than 1400 containers were collected at Te Puna (BOP) on 12 November and more than 2300 at Darfield (Canterbury) on 24 November.
Thanks to all those farmers and growers who took part and to Farmlands for hosting both events!
Check out our upcoming ...
Agrecovery Foundation is calling for councils to introduce and enforce burning bans after a recycling surge followed the introduction of a burning ban in Canterbury in January 2014.
Container recycling in the Canterbury region increased 113 percent to 36,140 kg in the six months after the introduction of the ban, compared to 16,960 for the same period last year.
“We have seen a clear link between this ban and an increase in recycling in the Canterbury region,” says Agrecovery Foundation Chair, Graeme Peters.
“It’s hard to argue with the numbers. The positive stand by Environment Canterbury has had a marked impact on the environment and we are calling on other councils to implement new bans or do more to enforce existing bans.
“In ...
Agrecovery Rural Recycling container collections hit 30,000 kg for the month of May, the largest ever monthly volume since the programme began in 2007. This record month comes on the back of significant increases in new members, collection volumes and website interest during the annual Agrecovery promotion, which gives recyclers the chance to win $5000 in prizes. Duncan Scotland, Marketing Manager for Agrecovery says “The 30,000 kg equates to a 20ft shipping container being filled with recycled plastic every day of the month, so it was a lot of containers diverted from burning or dumping.” Scotland says farmers and growers are responding to the changing farming environment where demand for sustainable practices from both the market and the public keeps ...
Waikato onion producers, Chapman Onion Exports, have been rewarded for their recycling efforts in the recent Agrecovery container promotion, winning one of the ten $500 rural supplier vouchers. The company, who have been in business since 1977, have recycled over 6,000 containers in 6 years with Agrecovery through the Matamata and Pukekohe collection sites. According to Brenhan Chapman, Area Manager Matamata, the programme is a very convenient way to deal with their empty chemical containers: “We like to be proactive with compliance and were early adopters of the service. We knew it was likely to become a future requirement of customers that we were responsible and followed best practice. “Like anything, the process seemed a bit difficult initially but its ...
Robert Crawford, a sheep and beef farmer from Gore, was one of ten recyclers to win during the recent Agrecovery container promotion. He started recycling around 2011 and says that taking the empty agrichemical and drench containers in for recycling is pretty convenient. “It’s just as easy to take them into town as to do anything else with them,” explains Robert. “The staff at Advanced Agriculture in Gore are really helpful and the whole process is pretty pain free.” The Crawfords have been farming Arauatu, their 200 ha property in Gore, for the last 14 years, and say that while they don’t have a lot of containers, the empty containers they do use need to go somewhere: “We don’t need ...
Seed Orchard Manager Jayne Arscott is pretty clear that Agrecovery is the simplest and most convenient way for Proseed NZ Ltd to get rid of their used herbicide and fungicide containers. “It’s really simple – we have a set group of staff who do the spraying; they triple rinse the containers as they’re emptied, and then when there’s enough, they take them down to the Amberley collection site. It’s not complicated.” Proseed NZ Ltd is the principal tree seed supplier in New Zealand and they also export to over 30 countries from their seed orchards in North Canterbury. According to Jayne, they used to give containers to people who wanted them or took them to the Amberley dump. “But when ...
