Hon Trevor Mallard
Minister for the Environment

5 September 2008 Speech Notes

Embargoed until: 1.30pm

Hanable the CANable the start to creative recycling

Environment Minister Trevor Mallard's speech at the presentation to Hanable the CANable Competition Winners, Greenacres School, Tawa

Good afternoon everyone.

It is a pleasure to be here today, to congratulate you for your initiative and your success in the Hanable the CAN-able Monster Competition, and to encourage you to keep up the great work in your recycling efforts.

Congratulations to all you kids and also to the teachers of Greenacres School for organising the entries to this competition. Overall, the quality of the competition was very high with a total of 89 entries, and I understand that all eight classes in this school submitted an entry.

And well done to the Wellington Regional Hanable the CANable winner, Room One from Greenacres School for their entry, Tin-o–saurus. Your winning entry looks amazing and the win is very well deserved. Congratulations to you all.

I understand that people voted online for their monster of choice. Congratulations also to the runner up, Koraunui School for Clyde the Cool Can Man and the People’s Choice Award winner Oxford Crescent School’s the Horrible Unbeatable Oxterminator.

Did you know each family in New Zealand uses about six cans a week? Only about three of those are recycled, while the other three end up as litter, or are buried in a landfill where they slowly rust away.

If each of us over the whole country recycled just one more can every year that would recover enough steel to build 20 buses. And we would also save burning lots of coal (which is needed to make steel). It’s great to see that you kids are doing your bit to recycle, and using your recycled cans in such creative ways.

I would like to thank CANZBAC for their support of recycling through competitions like this one. They know, like I do, how important it is that people realise how easy it is to recycle, and what the benefits are.

Almost everyone in New Zealand can recycle at home these days and the government is working hard with local communities to set up recycling bins that you can use when you are out and about in town. We already have them here in Wellington (on Lambton Quay and around the railway station). Look out for bins that say: ‘LoveNZ – Recycle with Care’.

Back to today’s competition. The kids of Greenacres School sure have shown that they know about recycling. For grown ups like me, these are things that we didn’t learn at school, so I hope you will go home and teach Mum and Dad a bit about it. Because recycling is one thing that kids today often know a whole lot more about than their parents do.

Recycling also helps keep New Zealand clean and green. Will kids who live in the next century enjoy the same beautiful environment that we are enjoying today? To make sure that they do we need to encourage everyone to recycle and keep our environment clean and green, and it’s people like you, and your families and friends that really make the difference.

Every time you or your parents choose something at the shop, there are three things I ask you to think about. Can the packaging from your purchase be recycled? If not, is there another choice that can be recycled? Do you really need a plastic bag to carry it home in?

Perhaps you can take a reusable bag from home, or maybe do without a bag altogether. If you can help your family and friends make good choices about recycling too, we will all be better off in the long run.

Thank you.

ENDS

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