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Auckland Council/Supplied
Starting in April, food scraps bins will slowly be rolled out to all of Auckland and will be collected weekly, with the aim of stopping 40 thousand tonnes of waste going into landfill
Tea bags, paper towels and fruit peels destined for landfill will have a new, environmentally-friendly home in 2023, with plans for food scraps collections to roll out across Auckland.
Having gone through a trial period in Papakura since 2018, from April Aucklanders will be given a new bin to put out every week, for organic foods and materials.
The 23-litre bins will be collected weekly from the roadside, on the same day that the landfill bins go out.
Fruit and vegetables, bread, dairy products, meat bones, coffee grounds and tea bags are some of the items that can be put in the bin.
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However, lawn clippings, food wrapping, nappies and disposable food containers won’t be able to go in.
From collection, the scraps will be taken to a holding facility in Papakura, before being trucked to Exogas’s food processing plant in Reporoa.
Auckland Council/Supplied
The food scraps bin (left), compared to the landfill and recycling bins.
Auckland Council general manager of waste management Parul Sood said analysis of landfill rubbish bags found that around 45% was made up of items that could go in the new food scraps bins.
Around 100 thousand tonnes goes to Auckland’s landfill each year, she said, and the goal for the first year of the food scraps collection is to take 40 thousand tonnes out of that.
Each household’s scrap collection contributes to reducing the regions impact on the environment and helps mitigate climate change, Sood said.
“Every little bit helps.”
STUFF
Nine-year-old Nico Tauri has asked Chris Hipkins, along with other ministers with education portfolios, to help put compost bins in every school.
Sood put the challenge to Aucklanders to give food scrap collection a try, to see how much rubbish you can divert from your bins.
The organic waste will be broken down and used in two ways, as digestate and biogas.
Digestate can be used for fertiliser, while biogas is collected and used for heating and electricity.
The roll-outs will begin in April for the Waitākere and North Shore areas, before moving down Auckland, finishing in Franklin in October.
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