HELP US HELP THE ENVIRONMENT | THE PLAZA

Rubbish bins.

That’s right – you can now treat our food court like your favourite restaurants. Relax, knowing your rubbish is being cleared and sorted to ensure we recycle as much as possible and reduce the waste going to landfill.

Aotearoa New Zealand generates more than 17 million tonnes of waste each year. Of that, almost 13 million tonnes go to landfill – that means almost 76% of the material we use is completely wasted.

Of that waste, food and plastic are the fourth and fifth largest sources of waste going to Class1 landfills (those accepting household and other wastes), respectively.

Food accounts for 9% of waste and plastic follows at 8.3%.

At Kiwi Property, we are committed to taking the steps today to create a brighter future for the generations of tomorrow.

As part of our Sustainability Strategy, we have an ambition to create places that promote wellbeing and have a positive impact on the environment.

Within that, we have a target of net zero operational waste to landfill by 2050. Already, we have reduced our operational waste by 24% since 2012.

In The Plaza specifically, we have reduced the average waste we send to landfill by 13% in the last five years.

On top of this, we are actively working to improve waste management – not only recycling all that we can, but doing so correctly.

When non-recyclable materials are disposed of in recycling bins, the recyclables must be sorted from the non-recyclables – a job costing councils millions of dollars.

Plastic bags, nappies, coffee cups, fabric, wet wipes and dirty containers are among the most common culprits hiding among recycling and every month, amounting to thousands of tonnes of waste being diverted to landfills.

Every little bit we can do to correctly sort recycling helps.

In the last year alone we have diverted, nearly 4 tonnes of coffee grinds, 66,700 kgs of organic waste from food (that’s equivalent to 400,000 pies), 100,100kg of cardboard, 610 wheelie bins of plastic and 72 wheelie bins on glass!

What’s more our public water filling station fills an average of 51,000 bottles per year reducing the use of single use plastic bottles – nice work shoppers!

Beyond the food court, several loading docks in Kiwi Property centres have been revamped to look and feel more like recycling stations rather than rubbish dumps.

Large recycling bins are clearly labelled and colour coded to differentiate different materials. Plastic, bottles/cans etc., food, oil, paper, cardboard and coffee grinds each have their own bin, creating a culture of accountability in our centres.

 We encourage you to join us in reducing waste and correctly sorting your recycling at home. To help, we’ve outlined where some of your household waste items should be disposed of in Palmerston North*:

Council Wheelie Bin:

• Aluminium can
• Cans/tins
• Cardboard
• Junk mail
• Magazines
• Newspaper
• Plastic number 1
• Plastic number 2
• Plastic number 5
• Wrapping paper

Palmerston North City Council Rubbish bag:

• Aluminium foil
• Bottle tops
• Broken glass (wrapped in newspaper)
• Food scraps
• Plastic number 3
• Plastic number 4
• Plastic number 6
• Plastic number 7
• Plastic wrap/soft plastic
• Polystyrene
• Spray cans
• Takeaway coffee cups

Glass crate:

• Glass bottles
• Glass food jars

* Source: Palmerston North City Council