plastic resource that\'s being tossed away

Plastic bags in New Zealand are poorly recycled, and a plastic company imports old shopping bags from the United States into road guardrails and other products.
Mount Wellington plastic recycler Valentine Picton puts fragile plastic films such as shopping bags and plastic wrap
Packaging for the protection of cargo pallets, made into sturdy products such as road guardrails, garden edges and wire plastic reels.
He told the Herald that he was importing plastic bags because there were too few old plastic bags recycled in New Zealand and was dumped in a landfill.
Nearly a billion plastic bags are used by New Zealanders every year, but the proportion of recycling is very small.
The packaging board said that about our plastics were recycled and the rest were eventually thrown into the garbage dump.
Mr. Picton, who hired about 20 employees at his recycling facility, said that imported plastic shopping bags were \"like bringing coal to Newcastle \".
\"There is no need for any shopping bags to go to the landfill,\" he said . \".
\"I can use every shopping bag in this country.
We saw all of this waste because we didn\'t feel like collecting plastic bags in bags [outside]Supermarket.
\"It takes 450 kg to 1500 kg plastic bags to make a cable reel, so Mr Picton goes through thousands of tons of plastic each year.
Any plastic bags are OK and do not need to be cleaned
They are all chopped and then disinfected with a heating machine.
\"I asked mom and dad to come here with plastic bags,\" he said . \".
\"It doesn\'t matter if there is any banana peel or broken jar jam in it.
Picton said he wants more retailers to follow the example of warehouses. The warehouse sends him enough plastic bags and pallet packs every year to enable him to produce plastic cable covers several kilometers longThe 61-year-
Old, who has worked in the recycling industry for 35 years, says his business is \"pollution solutions \".
In landfill, plastic bags can take hundreds of years to break down and threaten waterways, landscapes and wildlife.
\"This is common sense, but many people don\'t understand it.
\"They don\'t believe you can make a road guardrail or cable reel with a shopping bag,\" Mr Picton said . \".
Green Party MP Nandor Tanczos says it\'s crazy for valuable resources like plastic to be \"thrown in holes on the ground.
\"The international price of plastics is quite high at the moment due to oil prices,\" he said . \".
\"We\'re used to one-off, so-
Called \"convenient\", singleuse packaging.
\"We need to change our whole culture in these things.
\"In August, Mr. Picton\'s recycling company, Enviroreel plastics, and the warehouse, won the packaging board Environmental Award for their joint recycling program.
Engineer Mr Picton himself developed the process of turning plastic into cable reels and cable covers.
For more than 20 years, he has been recycling plastics, starting a similar but larger recycling business in the United States, and then decided to move his family back to New Zealand after the September 11 explosion.
Paul Curtis, chief executive of the packaging board, said the arrangement with the warehouse was an example of how retailers could get environmental benefits behind the scenes at the wholesale level.
Many consumers, he said, are keen to reduce packaging waste, but that doesn\'t mean less packaging on shelves.
\"A lot of things are not visible to consumers,\" he said . \".
\"Before the product was put on the shelves, many of the incoming packages were taken apart.
This is about finding a way to recycle the package.