Projects

A 2019 report Rethinking plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand published by the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, says that construction globally is the second biggest user of plastics, and in this country the industry uses 15% of the plastic products manufactured here. It says that use of plastics has increased in the sector as a result of more being used in new products (such as shrink wrap) and established building materials (such as pipes, bathroom fittings) changing to plastic from other materials.

The issues that the construction sector needs to address include, Increased use of plastic overall, including new uses of plastic such as building shrink wrap, without recycling options for example, limited end‐of‐life options for building shrink wrap are being reported by industry. The vast majority of construction plastic goes to landfill due to absence of fully integrated recycling system.

Expected Project Outcome:

• Reduce Construction & Demolishing plastic waste by developing an on-shore infrastructure for fully integrated recycling systemfor construction plastics via product stewardship schemes for used PVC and Shrink wraps.
• Up scale the existing product stewardship schemes for PVC (#3) pipes by collecting the used PVC pipes, PVC frames, PVC Bathroom fittings from the Construction & Demolishing Sites and develop onshore recycling infrastructure required to close loop resource recovery.
• New infrastructure will focus on closed‐loop solutions for collecting, sorting, cleaning, material recovery and supplying recovered PVC and LLDPE to the plastic industry as an alternative to imported virgin resins.

Objective

• Develop an Integrated-on shore recycling facility for Construction and Demolishing PVC such as pipes, frames, cables and guttering to recover 600 tons of PVC per annum
• Develop an Integrated-on shore recycling facility for Construction and Demolishing Shrink-wraps and Packaging to recover 600 tons of LLDPE per annum
• Over 80% of the recovered materials to supply back to the New Zealand Plastic Industry to create sustainable circular economy.
• Develop reliable research and data on  the  composition  and  volume  of  construction waste in Aotearoa  New  Zealand in order to address issues of plastic waste in the industry and share it with regulating bodies.