After visiting Southland Enterprises’ recycling plant recently, the Wastebusters Trust discovered that major corporate companies are on the reduce, reuse and recycle bandwagon.   

For example, Fonterra is firmly focused on reducing waste and educating their staff.  In mid 2007, Fonterra hit their national target of a 75% reduction in waste to landfill, and by June 2008 they had reached 84%! 

Here are some examples of what Fonterra has achieved nationwide:

• Some dairy products have a very short shelf life - once the ‘best before’ date is reached these products used to be disposed of to landfill. Fonterrra is now recycling and reusing all its expired or end-of-run product into the animal nutrition market.
• Balers have been installed at sites to compact sorted cardboard and plastics for recycling.  This also lowers transportation costs and increases efficiencies
• Worm farms have been introduced at sites and the fertiliser created is then used to grow trees and plants
• Sample milk bottles are shredded and reprocessed into pots and planters

For further information on Fonterra and their worldwide efforts, visit www.fonterra.com and follow the links.

Thanks to WasteNet Southland and Southland Community Wastebusters Trust for providing this information.

IMAGE: Jim my Colvin from SEI with materials collected for recycling from Fonterra