First past the post for enviro benefits

Future Post, which expanded production to the upper South Island mid 2023, has taken top honours in this year’s Marlborough Environment Awards.

Biggest plastic recycler in NZ

The New Zealand owned company turns waste plastic into fence and vineyard posts, as well as a range of other products for landscaping, amenity and marine applications.

It is the biggest recycler of plastic in NZ.

“Future Post is a truly circular model of production where plastic is reused through recycling and waste going to landfills is reduced,” award judges noted.

“The founder, Jerome Wenzlink, is applauded for his lateral thinking, inventiveness and tenacity for getting his ‘product off the ground’, figuratively speaking, and successfully into market.

“For too long farmers and growers have had no alternative to CCA treated timber materials. Now they have a sustainable and environmental alternative.”

Judges were impressed by Wenzlink’s inventiveness and ability to see his vision through to the end product, his ethos to use only raw products sourced from NZ, and the company’s concern for staff handling contaminated plastics, ensuring suppliers screen product before sending it to be processed.

Future Post recycles plastic types 2, 4, 5, and 7 from domestic and commercial sources of waste plastic and turns it into premium 100 per cent recycled, Biogrow certified and UV stabilised products.

The UV stabilisation comes from the addition of powdered carbon, itself recycled.

The carbon has the added benefit of giving the posts a consistent colour.

The products are made up of a mix of polyethylene from the likes of wheelie bins and vineyard irrigation lines (high density plastic) and polypropylene from plastic bags, eg. bread bags (low density plastic).

It is important to have a proportion of soft plastic bags to make the melted substrate flow and mold through Future Post’s unique extrusion process.

Each vineyard post contains 22 kg of plastic and is the same weight as a wet wooden CCA treated post fresh from the factory.

A trial is underway to make stiffer and lighter posts for vineyards due to health and safety concerns about vineyard staff handling the 22 kg posts.

Future Post is also trialling making railway sleepers to replace wooden sleepers that are currently used.

The business is considering having its carbon footprint calculated because it realises the market will require it in time.

Judges say a NZ university has conducted a study on which posts are best from an environmental perspective and Future Posts came out the best with no sign of nanoplastics escaping into the wider environment – the report will be made available in the coming months.

The company used to use 100 per cent renewable energy in its factories, but since the winter of 2024 power crisis they have been forced to use the spot market for the foreseeable future.

However, if 100 per cent renewable power was to become affordable again the company will go back to that source.

Apart from NZ, Future Post has exported products to Tahiti, Rarotonga, Australia and USA – foundation piles, wharf supports, and building materials, due their resistance to termite damage and saltwater degradation.

There is interest in its process from Australia.