Thanks to Plastics NZ’s ‘CircularConnect’ programme, we got to work with two great teams at Flo & Frankie and Advanced Textiles Association New Zealand.

Some of the composite plastic waste streams from advanced textiles companies are difficult (or even impossible) to recycle – so we provided our client, Duncan’s Canvas, with a template to create plastics collection bag for F&F to collect their soft plastics in.

At F&F, soft plastics are sorted as they go (thanks to Environmental Innovation Centre workshops and our signage) and then taken to
PACT Recycling (using reverse logistics as the F&F van goes past the door once a week anyway). We spoke to Astron to ensure that the new reusable bag comes back to F&F every time.

The F&F team are testing the design for us, and we will continue to improve it and determine how many times it can be reused but they are super tough so hopefully for many years. Perhaps a future market for the ATA NZ too ?

So reusing waste from textiles to create bags to carry recyclable plastics for another company was a very happy solution!