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. 

• 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.

👉 Check out Ministry for the Environment's tips on ways you can reduce waste

We are part of the national Love Food Hate Waste NZ campaign which aims to help Kiwi families to waste less food.  For practical tips on how to reduce your own food waste and save money, visit lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz.

👉 NZ 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.
👉  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 item, with 20 million loaves thrown away each year

(and that doesn’t include the bread we throw to the birds!)