Lids off winner declared!

The competition ran district wide by Manawatū District Council and encouraged schools to follow recycling rules of removing the lid from milk and juice bottles, then collecting the lids within their School community for the month of November.  The largest number of lids collected per number of students determined the winner.

While this should already be a routine practice throughout the District, a large number of milk and juice bottles are recycled with the lids still attached.  Unfortunately, due to the size of the lid, when the bottles travel through the machines, the lids often do not stay intact.  These lids are too small to travel through the machines on their own or be bounded.

The competition was an overwhelming success from the 13 participating Schools and saw a total of 139,087 lids collected.

The Manawatū Home Educators had the largest number of lids collected per number of students, at 211 lids per student.  With a range of ages within the winning team and a high level of understanding for the importance of recycling, the Manawatū Home Educators used the competition to build it into their curriculum even completing a tour of the Manawatū Resource Recovery Centre.

Newbury School did their part with successfully collecting an incredible 32,228 lids.  The school’s environmental team of students championed the project.

The lids collected through the competition are being accepted by Future Post, a New Zealand owned and operated company that uses plastics to create versatile and durable fence posts. The Manawatū District Council has an existing partnership with Future Post as part of Council’s approach to a circular economy.

The competition prize was paid by Waste Levy Funds.