Subscribe to RSSRoad Cones To Be Waste Plastic
Road cones will soon be made here using waste plastic.
Environment Minister Nick Smith said there was a need to back up the effort of so many New Zealanders that recycle at home by encouraging businesses to produce products that reuse the millions of milk bottle.
Christchurch-based Alto Packaging has received $42,000 from the Waste Minimisation Fund to design and develop the manufacturing technology that uses recycled plastic resin to make road cones.
The Minister said: “This smart recycling initiative will mean that 150 tonnes of waste plastic won’t be going into landfills each year,” Dr Smith said. “It will also mean that New Zealand is not importing as much plastic. That’s good for the country’s economy and good for the environment.
“The funding from the Waste Minimisation Fund out of a total project cost of $304, 746 will also pay for testing the final product to confirm compliance with industry guidelines. It is expected the recycled road cones will be available from June this year and the initiative has the support of one of New Zealand’s largest roading contractors Fulton Hogan who plan to use the cones.”
The Waste Minimisation Fund supports projects that promote or achieve waste minimisation through increasing reuse, recovery and recycling and decreasing waste to landfill.
“The recycling efforts of councils and householders have been compromised by limited markets for products like used plastics. This Government wants to support the development of clean tech businesses likes this that make road cones from recycled milk bottles. This Bluegreen initiative will create new jobs, support household recycling and reduce the need to import resin,” Dr Smith said.
11 Comments
Awesome. And so cheap, too. This is the kind of stuff the government should be putting money into, instead of throwing it at road construction.
That said, building roads does require lots of road cones so maybe Joyce is just helping to prop up the market
“The Minister said: “This smart recycling initiative will mean that 150 tonnes of waste plastic won’t be going into landfills each year,” Dr Smith said. “It will also mean that New Zealand is not importing as much plastic. That’s good for the country’s economy and good for the environment.”
Matt, replace plastic with oil in the above sentence, and you have a REAL game-changer.
I like the initiative, but it’s doctoring around the edges. Road cones don’t cause global warming and NZ’s foreign trade imbalance!
Mark, plastic is made from oil, mostly. 150T less plastic is 10s-of-000s of litres of oil.
Matt do the maths …. it’s only about 180,000 litres of oil. Very insignicant in oil use for New Zealand.
Joyce should be moving away from roading spends onto ways of encouraging better transport.
Vote National - Kill Rail
I know it’s insignificant, but it’s still the better part of a day’s consumption. That’s not nothing. More projects like this means more oil that’s not needed.
Matt - that’s what I said. Taken individually, it’s a worthy initiative. Go for it.
Taken country-wide, it’s a drop in a bucket. When set against the massive spending on new motorways, it’s just a bit of greenwashing.
I would have thought road cones were made from recycled plastic already, why aren’t they ?
Plus, there’s the comment about plastic to landfill?
We are, and have been for a long time, separating our plastics for recycling and the council supplied large PLASTIC bins to put the recyclables in, where does it go to???
Matt - do the maths - not a best part of a day of oil consumption… do we only use 5.4 million litres of oil per month in NZ???
More like best part of a couple of hours max!
Vote National - Kill Rail
Richard - Even though we have separating out plastics for some time, I believe that due to the relatively small size of the country it hasn’t actually been that economic to recycle it so most of the plastic has just been sorted into the various types, bundled and buried with the thought that in the future it might be economic enough to reuse it. Not 100% sure about this but it is something I have heard a few times.
“bundled and buried with the thought that in the future it might be economic enough to reuse it”
At least that would make some sense… though the average punter would probably still feel he’s being done hard by somehow, having to separate plastics that aren’t being recycled.
why do the say recycled? its down cycled, those are going to be some major toxic road cones I think.
but its a start, more things like this need to happen.
it would be great if we could some use all the waste to bridges or something.
roads or no roads, people still need to get places.
if this stuff can be used to make road cones, then surely the inside of trains or something, like plastic seats for stadiums could also be made?