New World Lends Its Support To New Hawkes Bay Initiative Giving Kids Hands-on Sustainability Experience

New World is proud to partner with Plastics NZ on a brand-new initiative to help educate children on the importance of recycling and reducing waste to landfill.

Good Caps is an exciting pilot programme being run in 12 schools across the Hawkes Bay region designed to encourage kids to consider the big impact that small actions can have by collecting metal and plastic caps to be recycled.

Participating schools will compete to collect the most metal and plastic caps for ten weeks in Term 3 of 2022 to win awesome prizes including New World vouchers. Each school received a cash donation from The Packaging Forum for participating and the top three schools receive a live Nanogirl Show.

Mike Sammons, Head of Sustainability at Foodstuffs NZ says they’re pleased to support such a creative initiative that gets kids involved in sustainable, planet-friendly activities.

“It’s really important to establish a strong sustainability focus early on with our tamariki and help them understand that lots of smaller actions build up to have a big impact.”

“Being able to sort the caps, bring them to school and understand first-hand how recycling works and what we mean when we talk about a circular economy is a really cool thing for kids to participate in, so we were stoked we could help back this idea.”

Each school received a kit to start collecting and students were encouraged to fill the take-home bags with used metal or plastic caps preventing waste from landfill.

Just two weeks into the scheme a whopping 612 kgs of lids and caps have been collected across the region.

Sandy Botterill, Circular Economy Manager for Plastics NZ, says Good Caps is a creative sustainable solution to a real problem in New Zealand.

“Good Caps is designed to educate children on waste and recycling. Most times the small lids and caps can’t be effectively recovered through kerbside recycling and end up in landfill. This will be a great learning experience for children and their whānau to understand and practice sustainability”, says Botterill.

Mike Sammons says it’s great to be able to support locally led initiatives like Good Caps.

“We’re committed to be Here for NZ and this social promise is realised across the business. Part of our sustainability leadership is to actively promote waste minimisation including our ambitious target to divert 90% waste from landfill by 2023.”

All the Good Caps are collected each week from the schools by Lion Club members and are taken to Waste Management in Napier for weighing and analysis. Capturing the data is a critical part of the trial which will be used in future consultation with industry and government.

The plastic and metal caps are then bought by Aotearoa Plastic and Hayes Metals respectively and will be processed and recycled into fantastic new products.

All money earnt by selling new recycled products will go to The Lions Club chosen charity, Kidney Kids.

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