Don’t take that old car seat to the landfill – take it for recycling! That’s the message from SeatSmart Car Seat Recycling, the amazing team diverting mobile thrones from going to waste. By taking your expired car seat to Baby on the Move at 4 Market Grove in Hutt Central, you’re being a legend in both parenting AND the environment.
SeatSmart’s nationwide programme has two main goals:
1. Reduce waste to landfill (it’s not just Silverstream landfill that’s running out of space)
2. Raise awareness of car seat expiry dates.
That’s right: a lot of Kiwi parents don’t know that most tūru haumaru (car seats) have expiry dates of 6-10 years. Sunlight, physical stress and temperature changes can all weaken them over time – not to mention changing safety standards in keeping your pēpē safe.
When you take a car seat (any brand of booster, convertible seat or capsule) to one of SeatSmart’s locations, it’s whisked away for dismantling (up to 70% of each seat can be salvaged). Once this is done, the different materials are identified and separated before they’re sent on for recycling and repurposing. Where possible, the team return locking clips to car seat technicians so they can be assessed and hopefully reused. After all, reusing is much better than recycling!
As for the materials themselves, where do they end up? Well...
- Straps can be repurposed (after a good clean) to help make bags like totes, backpacks, and beach and shopping bags.
- With the plastics, SeatSmart recycles polypropylene (think ice-cream tubs), high-density polyethylene (like with milk bottles) and some polystyrene. These three plastics alone make up about 58% of the seat materials by weight, and go on to be turned into plant pots, shampoo bottles, building materials and electrical conduit materials.
- The metal, meanwhile, is the most recyclable of all the car seats’ components. It goes on to help create a wealth of new items and components. In fact, recycling steel uses 70% less energy than mining and refining virgin iron ore.
As of writing, the SeatSmart crew has recycled 38,972 car seats, with 176,016kg of plastic and metal recycled via their 48 collection sites around Aotearoa. Of course, this article is just a small part of the story. Read more here.
And if you have a car seat you no longer need, well, be sure to take it to Baby on the Move at 4 Market Grove – it only costs $20 to take it off your hands / out of your car.
See other local drop-off sites at seatsmart.co.nz/resources/sites-and-events/greater-wellington-collection-sites