This mural was created by the Taupō Climate action Group and the children of Taupō at the Taupō Children’s Day teddy bears picnic 2024.
The recycling standards for New Zealand were nationally standardised on the 1st of February 2024. Under the new rules, only certain things can be recycled, and these are the same all around the country. This is to avoid the confusion of different rules for different towns and cities, and to create a more standardised national recycling stream.
Under the new rules, you now only recycle the following things in your kerbside recycling:
Glass bottles and jars
Paper and cardboard
Aluminium and steel tins and cans
Plastic bottles and containers of plastic types 1, 2 and 5
These items must be clean, and larger than 50mm. Plastic and glass bottles and jars must have the lids taken off. Plastic lids in particular, are too small to be picked up by most recycling sorting machines. These lids can damage the sorting machines and are very difficult to find a recycler for.
As these lids are no longer recyclable, the Taupō Climate Action Group looked for an alternate use for them. We found inspiration from amazing plastic bottle cap murals that have been created around the world, and planned to create one at the Taupō children’s day teddy bears picnic. The teddy bears picnic was hosted by Taupō Family Centre, with support from Kids Greening Taupō, and the 2024 event had an eco-warrior theme. Many other community groups from around Taupō hosted stalls and activities on the day. This event was a great opportunity to create a community artwork out of waste!
We sent the word out, and people around Taupō collected their plastic lids for the mural for over a month. We sorted all the lids of different shapes and sizes by colour, and drafted out a scene of Taupō Moana and our Maunga on a re-purposed coreflute sign. On the day of the teddy bears picnic tamariki came and helped glue the lids onto the different coloured parts of the mural. It was quite addictive! A bit like doing a puzzle, or creating a giant diamond dots picture.
These are the before and after photos. We love this artwork we have created as a community! Do you think your group, club or school could create your own plastic lid mural?
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