Ten farmers and growers are $500 better off after recycling with the Agrecovery Rural Recycling Container programme during a recent promotion.
The promotion encouraged recycling of plastic agrichemical, animal health and dairy hygiene containers at 70 collection sites across New Zealand. Those recycling during March and April went in the draw to win one of ten $500 vouchers to spend at the rural supplier of their choice.
Ranging from Waipapa in the north to Ashburton in south, the winners show a good cross section of the primary sector are using the programme, including kiwifruit, citrus, potato and bulb growers, a vineyard, livestock farmers, a spray contractor and even a biodiesel and oilseed plant.
According to Duncan Scotland, Sales and Marketing Manager for Agrecovery, the incentive was enough to motivate people to recycle.
“We’ve not run a promotion like this before but recent reports of a lack of knowledge or motivation by many to use this free programme made us try something new and it was clearly a success,” says Duncan.
“We collected more than 26 tonnes of container plastic in the month directly following the promotion – it’s the first month we’ve exceeded 20 tonnes since the programme began in 2007.
“And critically we saw a jump in new members of more than 20% above our usual average, which means it was the push that some needed to start recycling with Agrecovery.”
During the promotion there was also a reported 60% increase in the number of unique visitors to the Agrecovery website.
“It’s great to see more people looking into the recycling and recovery programmes we offer, but even better the promotion was a real call to action – we saw a fantastic increase of nearly 400% on the viewing of some pages including the location of our collection sites, and the list of 56 supporting brand owners whose containers can be recycled for free through the programme.
“With collected plastic well up, the number of new members up, and the significant increase in web traffic, the results speak for themselves.”
“We continue to see the volume of plastic recycled through Agrecovery grow as more and more farmers and growers choose sustainable options for disposal over traditional burning and dumping,” says Duncan.
“This growth is expected to continue under the combination of changing attitudes to the disposal of plastics and increasing scrutiny of New Zealand’s clean green image by our export markets.”
A list of promotion winners is shown here.