Recycling helps Tait's green credentials

MAY 2007 - When Max Huston began at Tait’s nine years ago, the potential for recycling was not well known. He remembers watching the company truck being filled with unsorted rubbish from Tait’s manufacturing headquarters about once a month.

“We never go to landfill now,” says Max, a stock auditor and the recycling coordinator. “Everything that we dispose of goes to somewhere we can find a home for it.”

Since June 2004, almost 900 cubic metres of waste has been recycled – enough to fill three average Christchurch homes. But as always Tait targets are set high. The next goal for the team is to recycle waste that would total the equivalent size of the factory: 11,311 cubic metres.

Where Does it Go?

The highest and most visible volume of recycling comes in the form of soft plastics, which includes bags, tubing and trays.

Harder plastics, like the portable radio casing, are sent to another firm in Canterbury, which converts the material into diesel. Cardboard and paper are collected almost on a daily basis. Old radio batteries including those from all CSOs are sent to Auckland for recycling.

How Our Waste Helps the Community

Perhaps more importantly, many items that Tait no longer has a use for are going directly back into the community to help those most in need. When components become obsolete and we just can’t use them anymore they end up in a school science lab, Max says.

“Where we can’t recover the costs by selling them on to the after-sales market, we give them to a place in Christchurch called Electroflash. They then provide the components to high schools around New Zealand to be used for class experiments and projects.”

When Tait upgrades its computer terminals, the old monitors are put into use by educational facilities and other non-profit organisations.

Max has even on-sold scraps of aluminium to raise money for a local martial arts school. “It’s a nice way to help the community,” he says.

* TAIT achieved and has been certified to ISO 14001 since 2003. ISO 14001 is the international benchmark standard setting out the elements that make up an environmental management system.

Tait's achievement is notable as it is the first company in New Zealand to gain certification to the ISO 14001 standard using an environmental management system based on The Natural Step sustainability framework.