Article contributed by NZGBC member: GIB®
The growing level of waste entering New Zealand’s current landfill sites is becoming an increasingly important issue across many industries.
Many customers are now factoring in environmental considerations into their purchasing decisions, while local councils and central government continue to actively encourage waste to not be created in the first place and secondly are looking to divert waste away from landfill sites which are becoming increasingly capacity constrained.
The construction industry is not immune to the effects of this, as it is a major contributor towards landfill waste. Given this, its pleasing to see an increasing focus on the issue amongst many of the major construction industry players, resulting in proactive steps being taken to help reduce the issue.
One example of this is in the Auckland plasterboard market where Winstone Wallboards have recently added Green Gorilla 2M3 plasterboard recycling bags to its GIB® plasterboard delivered to site (DTS) service. For customers this means they can order their plasterboard recycling bags at the same time as placing their GIB® plasterboard DTS order with their preferred merchant.
Plasterboard offcut recycling bags are delivered to site along with the GIB® plasterboard order. When the offcut bag is full, a simple call to Green Gorilla sees the bag picked up and transported to Green Gorilla’s Onehunga recycling site. Here the gypsum in the plasterboard is extracted and reused in products such as compost, while the paper lining is also extracted and recycled into paper-based products.
While this specific service is currently only available in the wider Auckland region, Winstone Wallboards continues to work with a number of industry players to develop practical, long term plasterboard waste reduction solutions given the growing customer demand for these types of services nationally.
For more information on GIB® sustainability visit at www.gib.co.nz/sustainability