In celebration of Recycling Week (21–27 October 2024), Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) is launching a new recycling campaign: "Love Recycling, Fight Contamination." This initiative aims to empower the community with the knowledge and tools needed to recycle effectively and responsibly.

Partnering with Wastebusters, QLDC created a series of social media reels that highlight outstanding recycling practices, bust common recycling myths, and provide essential tips for minimising contamination.

The campaign comes off the back of Ministry for the Environment research which showed most Kiwis are doing a great job of recycling, with the majority putting the right items into the recycling bins. However, some people are still confused over what can and can’t be recycled, causing recycling contamination at the point of collection.

QLDC’s recycling reels aim to give the community the confidence to recycle correctly so more resources can be reclaimed, while reducing the district's carbon footprint and saving water, energy and raw materials. The reels can be viewed at www.youtube.com/@qldcinfo/shorts

The Love Recycling campaign focuses on what goes in each kerbside bin and how to get materials ready for recycling, as well as educating about common contaminants in the mixed recycled stream.

Key messages throughout the campaign include:

• Recycling is all about quality, which means collecting good condition materials that are empty, clean and dry.
• Placing incorrect or dirty materials in your recycling bins causes contamination which ultimately impacts the people that hand-sort the materials, making it harder and more expensive to meet quality standards required by reprocessors to recycle materials into new items.

QLDC has restocked supplies of the Recycle with Care brochure in offices and libraries throughout the district for those who wish to have a copy.

To further celebrate Recycling Week, the community is invited to come along to one of three library drop-in sessions to learn more about recycling in the district. QLDC and Wastebusters will be hosting the sessions at Wānaka Library on 22 October from 11.00am-12.00pm, Queenstown Library on 23 October from 10.00am -11.00am and Frankton Library on 23 October from 12.00pm -1.00pm.

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