Local Focus: New Plymouth upcycling centre, the Junction is getting upcycled

Saving 350 tonnes of rubbish from ending up in a landfill is no easy feat, but Douglas Hopkins and his team at the Junction have helped the New Plymouth community do just that.

”It’s the very challenging task of changing the way that our community interacts as consumers,” Hopkins said.

“The way we shop, what we purchase, and in particular, what we do with the waste that’s created as a result.”

The Junction is no ordinary op-shop. The team of 15 staff spend their days fixing and up-cycling products to save them from ending up in the bin.

”I’ve picked items out of skip bins that I have brought down here, the team has made a little bit of a change and they’ve sold the same day and gone back out to the community,” said Hopkins.

“So those moments are really rewarding.”

Education is a big part of minimising waste in the community.

”The goal is to make it more of a destination so people are coming out not only to shop, but they can learn in the process. They then take that home and start making those changes in their own home.”

Since opening in 2019 the Junction has sold more than 150,000 individual items, creating 15 jobs along the way.

”We don’t just give them a job, we also put them through a learning pathway so they receive all forms of training certificates.

“Everything from vehicle licensing to forklift licensing and anything else on their pathway that essentially makes them more employable in our community.”

The Junction itself is about to be upcycled, which will help deal with the 60 per cent of all waste which is generated by businesses.

”Next year, aiming for April we’ll see the construction of a much larger permanent building.

”We’ve also got a waste sorting depot coming, and that is taking skip bins directly off build sites and they will go through a sorting process that will actually also divert reusable materials back to this facility and the community.”

While the future of this Taranaki-based project looks bright, community facilities like this are already flourishing elsewhere around the country.

”These kinds of facilities have actually been going around New Zealand for over 20 years.

”It’s communities fed up with the waste that they were ending up putting in landfills, so they created alternatives which was these kinds of resource recovery facilities - and now you’ve got councils getting on board, realising the potential for them.”