Mapping a Greener Future: Council Staffer Creates Recycling Tool

Date:

23 May 2025, 10:49 am

Categories:

News

Chris Moody has developed a site that helps users find drop off recycling locations for materials that often end up sitting in a garden shed or are sent to the landfill instead of being recycled.

By day Chris Moody is a laboratory technician for Rotorua Lakes Council. By night he’s working on free resource he hopes will help reduce New Zealand’s waste footprint. It’s a labour of love for the father of two who sees the project as a way he can give back to his adopted country.

You’ve just bought a shiny new television.

It’s standing proudly in the living room, and you can’t wait to press the on-button and watch your favourite show in the glow of an impressively large screen.

There’s just one problem: What to do with the piles of polystyrene that came with your latest purchase?

It’s a question faced by many consumers and Rotorua local Chris Moody, an environmental laboratory technician at Rotorua Lakes Council, is providing an answer.

The 40-year-old has built a not-for-profit website which helps users find drop off locations for materials that often end up sitting in a garden shed or are sent to the landfill instead of being recycled.

RecycleMap – (recyclemap.co.nz) features more than 3,000 recycling location points across New Zealand for everything from paint and paint tins to polystyrene, batteries, cosmetics, caps and lids, tyres, e-waste and soft plastics.

Apart from tin cans, glass and cardboard, RecycleMap focuses on materials not usually accepted in kerbside recycling services.

“It’s stuff that can be recycled but the public does not know where,” Chris says. “It’s stuff that ends up in the landfill or sitting in your garage gathering dust.”

RecycleMap.co.nz

Users of the site can simply select an item type and see where they can take items to be recycled, with the closest locations shown first.

The idea for the website came after a routine shopping excursion six months ago. During a visit to his local Mitre 10, Chris noticed a recycling bin for polystyrene and then a collection bin for old cosmetics at Chemist Warehouse.

“I thought, ‘huh, I didn’t know you could recycle that here’.”

By day Chris Moody is a laboratory technician for Rotorua Lakes Council.

He also wondered how many in-store recycling drop offs there were and how easy they were to find.

While there were individual retail and council websites providing recycling locations, there was no website bringing all the information together, Chris says.

He began spending his evenings building RecycleMap.

Initially the site provided information for about six recycling categories in the Rotorua district. It has since grown to 3309 marker locations across the country, covering 16 recycling types, and the number is ever growing.

He has spent about 150 hours working on the site in his own time.

It’s been a labour of love for the father of two young children who moved to New Zealand from the coastal city of Bournemouth in the UK eight years ago.

The move was prompted by the fact he and his wife, both huge J. R. R. Tolkien fans, wanted to see “Middle Earth” for themselves. Rather than honeymoon in New Zealand, they figured they'd move here instead.

He loves his adopted country and its natural beauty and wants to protect it.

“I just want to give back,” Chris says.

He has built the site using an old, refurbished laptop and free online tools. The work has been self-funded, apart from a recent grant from the Packaging Forum of New Zealand for new computer equipment.

There are few funding opportunities for the project, so Chris added a donation option on the website.

No one has so far taken up the opportunity to donate but the offer still stands, he jokes.

'It’s stuff that can be recycled but the public does not know where' - Chris Moody.

He has no plans to make money from the site and it will remain free to users.

“I just want to keep it close to cost-neutral.

“The ultimate aim is to provide a resource to the community so they can find out where they can recycle and reduce the amount going to the landfill.”

He hopes the site might help shape policy decisions by revealing areas that have limited recycling resources and that it might also encourage retailers to drop restrictions that only items bought in-store will be accepted for recycling.

Finding new locations, and updating existing locations is a big task, especially as the site grows.

The hope is that as the site becomes more established with increased traffic, site visitors will submit location changes, effectively crowd-sourcing the data and keeping the site as up to date as possible.

RecycleMap features more than 3,000 recycling location points across New Zealand for everything from paint and paint tins to polystyrene, batteries, cosmetics, caps and lids, tyres, e-waste and soft plastics.

RLC Waste and Climate Change Manager Craig Goodwin says the new web-based tool is a welcome resource for anybody wishing to discover where they can divert their unwanted recyclables.

“This new tool allows you to search for a place to go by the type of material you’re struggling to find a place for. This is a significant point of difference between Chris' approach and the other mapping tools out there. Its user friendly, practical, and a great new way to support the circular economy.”

Chris’ boss Environmental Laboratory supervisor Adam Yeabsley says his colleague is a great ambassador for his workplace.

“I think it’s amazing what he is doing outside of work. When you employ people, you get the whole person . . . Chris’ curiosity and his natural inclination to tinker should be fostered because it is not just value to us here, it’s of value to the whole community.”

Opportunities to reduce waste going to landfill

A bin audit in 2020/2021 found more than half of the contents of the average rubbish bin in Rotorua could be prevented from going to landfill.
The audit showed an average of 56% organic, compostable waste in kerbside rubbish bins and a further 10% items which could have been recycled.
Average levels of contamination in recycling bins at the time of was 13.5%. More recently it has averaged 22%.
In the past 12 months, about 590 tonnes of contaminants were removed from 3034 tonnes of collected mixed recycling (yellow lid bins) from Rotorua and sent to landfill.
Putting only the correct items into your recycling bin, and ensuring recyclable items are clean and dry, will reduce the number of items that unnecessarily go to landfill.

Useful links:

A guide on what to do with unwanted items – (PDF, 5.4MB)

Tips on reducing waste