Cook Islands General Transport (GT) wants to send recyclables back to where they came from.
For a small fee GT collects imported metal items such as old vehicles, scrap steel, batteries and white ware and ship them overseas to be recycled. The programme is an effort to return imports to their country of origin, or to the country they came from.
"By using a play on words (we want) to get people thinking about where all imports come from and about recycl- ing most, if not all, of our imported products,” said Jessie Sword, who heads the GT programme. “GT hopes to protect the environment by ridding it of metal waste."
"We cannot keep burying all that we import because it is already causing huge issues at the land fill and around the island. We need to make a stand now to recycle and re-export as much recyclable imports as we can." Sword said.
John Wichman, who is a shareholder at Recycling Cook Islands and the spokesperson for the recycling initiative, said that recycling programmes are losing government support which poses a serious problem.
"Government has a landfill but the landfill doesn’t deal with all sorts of waste." he said.
The landfill was expected to be able to deal with hazardous waste by now but a shortage of funding slowed the project.
"Government hasn’t taken that up which was a recommendation in the national sustainable development plan so it sat there and we started up (this programme) because we saw there was a requirement for it,”
Wichman said. “Government needs to get in there and support it or run the risk of us closing down and there will be no infrastructure to deal with hazardous waste after that." he said.
The NZ government does provide assistance for recycling initiatives, but its funding will dry up in December if government does not get behind it.
General Transport heralds its programme as a better recycling option.
"Is it better to leave these items in the land fill or your backyard, or to send it away in a responsible manner where it will be used again?" Sword asked.
In 2008, 52 full containers of ferrous and non-ferrous waste were shipped to New Zealand to be recycled and re-used, but last year only 12 made it out.
"That’s still good." Wichman said. "Regardless, the project does need support." he said.
Cook Islands News