'Talking rubbish' helps Tauranga night market vendors clean up

Gourmet Night Market vendors took part in a waste management workshop. Photo / Supplied

Food vendors at Tauranga's Gourmet Night Market have taken part in a waste management workshop in a bid to make the event as eco-friendly as possible.

Market organiser Kim Renshaw said the aim was to ensure the market produced zero waste.

Every Monday last summer, Ms Renshaw would spend two hours up to her armpits in old food waste and dirty cardboard plates.

She said she had to prove to her local compost facility that taking event waste in the Bay of Plenty was possible.

"It wasn't a great job, but once I knew what the problems were, I could eliminate them."

Even if that meant being buried in old food scraps, she said.

Ms Renshaw said the Gourmet Night Market had always weighed all of its waste on the night of the market, and finding out exactly what the compost contained was the next step necessary to getting the best results possible.

She said her aim was to bring the vendors at the market along on her sustainability zero waste journey. A grant from Bay of Plenty Regional Council's Waste Resource Advisory Group Fund has allowed her to take that message further.

The group provided $4165 to fund waste education at the night markets aimed at influencing waste behaviour change at public events and at home.

The first workshop was held earlier this month - and to Ms Renshaw's surprise 65 people went along, more than twice as many as she had expected.

"I underestimated the value the workshop would have. Now those vendors have actually seen the products we want them to use, the range of what's out there is incredible," she said.

The workshop, the first of several, was called 'Meet Up, Talk Rubbish', and was initially for vendors at the Gourmet Night Market. But others came as well to talk about the Bay of Plenty's waste stream, the range of compostable packaging available and why banned products at the Market were actually banned.

The first workshop has already had an impact with one local restaurant changing its entire packaging from plastic to compostable.

Already the Night Market can claim 94 per cent waste diversion from landfill. This year they've developed their Green Vendor Award, which will provide the winning vendor with $500 worth of packaging from Friendlypak and $250 cash.

"As an event we have an opportunity to do something useful with our waste, but also to create discussion about it. There is strength in working together to find solutions."