Facts

Rubbish can take a very long time to break down, for example 1 plastic bag can take 10 - 20 years to break down and one fizzy-drink can can take 200 – 500 years!

The Auckland region makes enough waste to fill a rugby field the size of Eden Park, 10 stories high EVERY MONTH!!
Christchurch generates enough rubbish to fill Jade Stadium to the top of the goal posts, every month
Dunedin makes 100 thousand tons of rubbish a year!!

We can decrease the amount of rubbish we make quite easily if we:
REDUCE, REUSE AND RECYCLE!!!

You can reduce the amount of rubbish you put out by reusing items (using food scraps to make compost or by buying a big container of foodstuffs like yoghurt and using small plastic containers to take enough for your school lunch; instead of taking a little pottle each day.

Do you know

That different cities/regions within NZ recycle different items.  If you look at the bottom of your plastic rubbish (fizzy bottles, shampoo bottles, yoghurt containers etc) you’ll see a little number in a triangle.  That’s the recycle code number.
Items with the number 1 in the triangle (like drink bottles) get recycled into things like carpet, new drink bottles and apparently even sleeping bag stuffing.
Items with the number 2 in the triangle (like milk and shampoo bottles and some shopping bags) get recycled into buckets, pipes and compost bins.

It makes a huge difference in time and money when your family sort and clean your recycling before you put it out for collection.

That the plastic recyclables collected from the curb are sorted in a collection centre and some is packed and sent overseas for recycling!  Plastics that are recycled here are prepared and cleaned, which means they cut each item into little pieces and wash the pieces before they melt them and extrude them (squirt them) into long spaghetti-like strings and cut them into pellets when they’re dry.  The pellets get melted again later to make new plastic items.

Some of our used paper is recycled here in New Zealand and some of it is sent overseas too.

Check out these cool links for some great ideas on recycling and looking after the earth
www.enviroschools.org.nz
www.reducerubbish.govt.nz

Some weird and wacky facts
Recycling has been around for a long time for instance in 400bc archaeological studies of ancient waste dumps have shown household waste (such as ash, broken tools and pottery) was being recycled.
Some of the things that are currently being recycled around the world are:

Concrete
Glass
Cans
Batteries
Computers
Steel
Aluminium
Paper
Plastic
Cloth
Timber
Ships
Tyres