Waste minimisation

A great place to start living more sustainably is to think about how you, your family, your school, your business and your community can reduce, reuse and recycle.

You can reduce waste making small changes – buy reusable rather than disposable products, taking your own bags to the supermarket, choose products with less packaging and buy only what you need.

Compost your food scraps (eg fruit and vegetable peelings, teabags and coffee grinds)  and gardening waste (eg leaves and grass clippings).

Before you throw anything away, think whether any part of it can be reused and given another life.  For example:

• jars, tins and plastic containers are great for storage
• take your unwanted household goods to Trash Palace
• take gas bottles, car batteries and green waste to Spicer landfill for recycling.

Recycle plastic, cans, glass, paper and cardboard by putting them out in your kerbside recycling service.

Soft plastics are anything made of plastic that can be scrunched into a ball.  These are recyclable but we recommend you put them in the soft plastic bins located in the entrances or exits of some of our local supermarkets and stores. In Porirua, you can take soft plastic bags (like bread bags, frozen food bags, toilet paper packaging, confectionery and biscuit wrap, chip bags, pasta and rice bags, courier envelopes, shopping bags, sanitary hygiene packaging) to the following stores:

• Countdown Aotea
• Countdown Porirua
• Moore Wilsons Porirua
• New World Porirua
• New World Paremata
• New World Whitby
• Pak'nSave Porirua
• The Warehouse Porirua

We want to help your school reduce waste and to educate and inspire students to contribute to this.  

We support schools through

• Compost Classroom Programme: 
  Helps schools reduce the amount of food and green waste going to landfill
  
• presentation to students and teachers
• supporting waste audits
• Enviroschools programme
  National programme which helps schools take a long-term, whole-school approach to sustainability

For more information, contact us on phone (04) 237 5089.

Other resources for schools

•  O-I New Zealand
  Up to $25,000 is available each year for school environmental projects
  
• WWF – New Zealand Environmental Education Action Fund
  Financial support available for sustainability projects in schools
• Sustainability Trust
  Organise waste audits and environmental workshops for schools
• Story of Stuff Project
  See short films and resources about consumption and solutions to waste 

We are part of the national Love Food Hate Waste NZ campaign which aims to help Kiwi families to waste less food. 

New Zealand families waste about $560 each year on food which is thrown out uneaten.  This adds up to a staggering $872 million for the whole country.

Put another way, we throw away 122,547 tonnes of food annually, enough to feed 262,917 people or 4.5 times the population of Porirua for a year. Bread is the most wasted food item, with 20 million loaves thrown away each year – and that doesn’t include the bread we throw to the birds!

For practical tips on how to reduce your own food waste and save money, visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz.

Kate Meads runs regular Waste Free Living, Waste Free Parenting and Food Lovers Master Class  workshops in Porirua.  Visit Waste Free with Kate 

The Recycling Rewards Programme is designed for shopping villages, helping them to reduce their waste going to landfill through recycling. 

For more information, contact us on (04) 237 5089.

All councils in the Wellington region have adopted a new regional Waste Management and Minimisation Plan (2.4MB pdf). The aim is to reduce the amount of waste produced, to better reuse waste resources and to recycle more. The councils are working together on a number of national and regional education initiatives to overcome the waste issues