One of the most common pack sizes for paint in New Zealand is the 10 litre pail, packaged in a polypropylene material. The pails are supplied from Viscount Plastics in Auckland and are delivered on pallets with a cardboard layer pad on the top and bottom, finished with a wooden cap at the top of the pallet and held together with blue plastic strapping and plastic stretch wrapping. Historically the cardboard layer pads and the plastic pallet stretch wrap were sent to landfill.
In recent months we have improved the plastic stretch wrap recycling process with the introduction of dedicated collection trolleys from Transpacific Technical Services (our waste contractor). This has simplified the plastic recycling programme and has increased the amount of plastic wrap being recycled.
The cardboard layer pads are now being reused, rather than recycled. Since its introduction the process has been further enhanced by a dedicated pallet storage system designed by some of our manufacturing staff. Once the pallet of collected layer pads is full it is shipped back to Auckland for reuse on the same truck that picks up the return pallets, therefore not incurring any extra cost or carbon foot print.
The cardboard layer pads recycling process collects about 130 layer pads per week – 6,500 per year – which Viscount Plastics can now reuse when shipping new stock to Gracefield, further simplifying the supply chain.
Cardboard layer pad reuse collection station
Stretch wrap recycling trolley