Waste

Worldwide focus on recycling and reducing waste

Around the world, Fonterra is focused on reducing waste at all of its sites, offices and facilities. We’re lifting awareness among our staff of the need to cut the use of paper and plastic throughout the 140 countries in which we operate and we’re recycling in most of these where recycling facilities exist.

Both Fonterra Australia and New Zealand are measured annually against key performance indicators, such as the ratio of tonnes of packaging versus tonnes of product, and tonnes of recyclable packaging versus total tonnes of packaging.

We have implemented an eco-efficiency programme across our New Zealand production sites, stores and offices to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing waste through elimination, reduction, recycling, re-designing operational systems and re-using non-recyclable materials. In mid-2009 we hit our national target of recycling or re-using 90 per cent of our total waste for the past 12 months – since 2005 we’ve recycled 28,000 tonnes of paper, cardboard and plastic as well as a huge amount of organic waste away from landfill. These savings are equivalent to 364,000 trees and 11820 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Cutting waste

Recycling is good, but eliminating or using less packaging and resources is even better. So we’re working across New Zealand with our packaging suppliers, recyclers, waste companies, the Ministry for the Environment, the Packaging Council of New Zealand, and WasteMINZ to find ways of further improving our environmental footprint.

Here are some of the ways Fonterra is reducing waste in New Zealand:
• Some dairy products have a very short shelf life, once the best before date is reached these products need to be disposed of in landfill. We have now set up a system to identify and distribute short dated product to charities such as the Salvation Army Food Bank and Mercy Missions. Any product that is not suitable for this purpose is processed into the animal nutrition market – cutting the amount of our total waste to landfill.
• Fonterra has installed balers at its sites to sort and compact cardboard and plastic for recycling, leading to greater transportation efficiencies and lower costs. For example at our Eltham and Canpac sites in New Zealand we’re recovering and recycling an average of 180 tonnes of cardboard and 65 tonnes of plastic per month that previously would have gone to landfill.
• We’re now recycling approximately 100 tonnes a year (or 50 to 60 truck loads) of plastic bottles through the use of a new milk sample bottle. The sample bottles are all sent to the testing laboratory, where the milk is automatically sampled and the bottle is then shredded and sent to Auckland to be reprocessed into pots and planters – doubly benefiting the environment.
• Fonterra also has fourteen worm composting units throughout its New Zealand sites. Food scraps from lunchrooms are munched up by the worms, and the resultant fertiliser is used to grow plants and trees around the factories.
• Petri dishes used for milk sample testing at our Te Rapa lab are washed and shredded so that the expanded polystyrene can be recovered.

Packaging – The New Zealand numbers

• 75,000 = standard wooden pallets taken out of our pallet pool in the last 18 months through efficient pallet management
• 40,000 = wooden pallets per year we now don't export by moving away from a custom-built one tonne container for butter fats to a completely reusable/recyclable container that has an integral pallet
• 2,400 = tonnes of paper we saved in the same exercise
• 430 = tonnes of paper we didn't use this season by reducing packaging waste in our powder packing areas
• 115 = tonnes of plastic per annum we saved as a result of re-designing our 20kg cheese bags

Recycling on-farm

On-farm plastics pose a significant and growing challenge for New Zealand farmers as the scrutiny of farming practices through compliance programmes, as well as customer driven environmental standards, place increased pressure on the primary sector to improve their environmental footprint.

The volume of silage wrap used in New Zealand each year is estimated to be growing due to a number of factors. This includes a buoyant and expanding dairying industry, a growing trend towards using silage, and an increase in the use of silage wrap over silage pits and stacks.

Wrapped silage bales are a convenient method of storing and feeding out silage to livestock, and their use has reduced the volume of potent leachate that can leak from traditional silage pits and stacks. Traditionally farming practice in New Zealand has been to either burn or bury plastic wrap, neither of which is environmentally sustainable.

Recent research has shown that an estimated 4,000 tonnes or 320,000 kilometres of wrap is used each year in New Zealand – enough to circle the world eight times. The good news is the recycling industry sees agricultural films as a useful raw material if it can be collected without excessive contamination, and as such, it should no longer be seen as farm waste to be burned and buried.

Two wrap recovery schemes currently operate in New Zealand: wrap packaging supplier, Agpac Ltd, have been operating a scheme for several years; while a second scheme was launched in March this year by Agrecovery Foundation, a not-for-profit charitable trust which governs the Agrecovery rural recycling programme.

An extension to the Agrecovery rural recycling programme was launched in July 2009, providing a nationwide system for the collection and disposalof unwanted and expired chemicals in agriculture. The programme gives all agrichemical users a safe and effective means to ensure farm waste is dealt with in a sustainable and fully compliant manner.