Te Kura Taumata o Panguru School has today been awarded a set of colour coded recycling and rubbish bins as winners of a national competition to help communities around Aotearoea combat litter and increase recycling.

Students and Teachers celebrated the award with a powhiri attended by representatives from Be a Tidy Kiwi and The Packaging Forum which ran the competition.

Te Kura Taumata o Panguru is one of nine schools from Canterbury to Northland that have won the specially designed set of bins for their innovative video pledges to Put Litter in its Place which they shared with their whanau and friends on social media.

Richard Leckinger, BATK Programme Manager said that Te Kura Taumata o Panguru students produced an inspiring video of their commitment to Be a Tidy Kiwi and are well deserving of the new bins. Leckinger explained,

“Thousands of Kiwis including students from Te Kura Taumata o Panguru School have made the Be A Tidy Kiwi pledge in 2019, and we’ve seen increasing commitments from young people as they are no longer prepared to sit by and watch us trash our country. The reason we ask for a public pledge to ‘put litter in its place’ is simple; the science says pledges work to change behaviour,” Leckinger says.

“Te Kura Taumata o Panguru chose a combination of rubbish, mixed recycling, compostables and waste paper bins. One of the aspects of these new colour coded bins heading to Northland is not only that they provide the nationally agreed colours for recycling and waste but they all have signage in Te reo Maori and English.”

The Packaging Forum Litter Project Manager Lyn Mayes says that the colours and clear signage are effective.

“Our BINfrastructure trials around New Zealand have proven to also reduce contamination, so we are delighted to get these designs into schools who otherwise couldn’t afford them. We know it’s important to have strategically positioned colour coded bins which allow people to dispose of their rubbish,” said Mayes.

“In the past, bins have been chosen to blend in with the streetscape, when what we have needed are eye-catching bins that use nationally agreed recycling and waste colours.”

Eighteen councils have now adopted the new style bins in a move towards national consistency. We’ve introduced this moveable ‘bin-frame’ as a more cost- effective and practical solution for schools. The bin-frame locks the wheelie bins in place and each school has chosen the type of materials which they want to collect.”

The campaign to take more colour coded bins into the regions has been developed by The Packaging Forum which promotes recycling under the Government’s Love NZ brand and The Auckland Litter Prevention Steering Group which manages the Be a Tidy Kiwi brand. The campaign is also supported by many councils around the country, the New Zealand Transport Agency and KiwiRail. The campaign has also been supported by the Government, the Prime Minister and a number of celebrities (www.bandtogether.co.nz).

The $2.4 million project has received $1.72 million funding from The Government’s Waste Minimisation Fund with a national advertising and consumer awareness campaign “Let’s put litter in its place – it’s just how we do things around here,” supporting this investment in infrastructure.

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