“Soil Health, Plant Health, Our Health” is key to the vision of Roots Shoots and Fruits, a New Zealand organic nutritional fertiliser supply company.
The addition of Roots Shoots and Fruits brings to 55 the number of brand owners supporting this product stewardship programme for agrichemical, biological, animal health and dairy hygiene plastic containers.
Tim Callaghan, Director of Waiheke based Roots Shoots and Fruits, says “We’re an enviromentally orientated company with a focus on sustainable and efficient organic liquid fertilisers and we specialise in nutrition and biological agents.
“We’re really passionate about improving grower profitability and increasing the nutritional value of food, but we also believe it’s important to respect our environment and improve soils for future generations. Being part of Agrecovery fits in well with these values.
“Our customers were also telling us that they wanted us to get on board with Agrecovery – some recent tenders have specified that products purchased must be part of the programme.
“It’s great to see this demand for sustainabile practices and joining Agrecovery proves we’re fully supportive of that,” says Tim.
The Agrecovery Container programme accepts empty triple rinsed plastic containers from 1 – 60 litres. Containers from participating brand owners like Roots Shoots and Fruits can be recycled for free at 70 collection sites around the country.
Nationwide the container recycling programme has seen a 49% increase in the volume of plastic collected between July 2010 to June 2011, as compared to the same period in the previous year. This reflects a record 121,150 kg of container plastic sent for processing here in New Zealand.
This growth in recycling volumes reflects the increasing pressure being brought to bear on New Zealand exporters to prove that agricultural and horticultural practices truly are “clean and green”.
Agrecovery’s online Smart Member Services allows growers and farmers to download fully auditable reports of their recycling activity or to request these via the freephone number.
Agrecovery is certified to ISO 14001 Environmental Standard and accredited as a product stewardship programme by the Minister for the Environment under the Waste Minimisation Act. This means reports carry real weight and can also simplify the audit process for both the grower and the auditor.