Blue Pacific Minerals is cleaning up the country – or at the very least, key parts of it such as the heavily polluted Rotorua lakes.
Not content with preparing pitches such as Wellington’s Westpac Stadium and Hamilton’s Waikato Stadium as detailed in our recent newsletter, Blue Pacific has taken its product, zeolite, to help clean up the lakes for Environment Bay of Plenty.
Zeolite has three key attributes that make it ideal for the clean-up programme for lakes that have deteriorated from years of agricultural run-off, be it from chemical fertilizers or animal effluent. The company is working with Scion, formerly the New Zealand Forest Research Institute, in Rotorua, and together they are developing exactly the right product for the job.
Blue Pacific Managing Director Dave Hill says zeolite is extremely porous and highly absorbent, allowing the crystal modified for this job to soak up nutrient anions, and break the cycle of nutrient excess, particularly during the summer months when temperatures rise. The modified zeolite they have developed with Scion then makes these nutrients unavailable to the water body.
As well as tackling the problem in the water, zeolite is also providing part of the solution on the land, Mr Hill said
A major part of the run-off issue is that the land around the lakes is typically sandy, free-draining soil and therefore has a low nutrient-holding capacity – which is bad for the farmers and bad for the water around them.
Blue Minerals provides the zeolite base for ‘DCn’, a nitrate inhibiting product being marketed by Ballance Agri-Nutrients for use on pasture land
“This is satisfying work to be involved in. We’re very proud of our product and we’re very proud to be contributing with our partners to a greener, cleaner New Zealand,” Mr Hill said.