Kāpiti Food Fair plant fruit trees in community orchard

Kāpiti Food Fair's waste minimisation strategy is working, with even bigger goals this year.

The Kāpiti Food Fair recently planted five fruit trees in the Mazengarb Reserve community fruit orchard as part of its waste minimisation strategy.

Last year the goal was set to eliminate 80 per cent of waste from the fair from going into landfill.

"We achieved 82 per cent with guidance from the Organic Wealth team and volunteers from No 49 Squadron Air Cadets," Kāpiti Food Fair co-owners Helene Judge and Jeanine van Kradenburg said.

"On the day, 44 per cent was diverted to compost, 38 per cent to recycling and 18 per cent went to landfill which Organic Wealth said was an exceptional result for year one."

Kāpiti Food Fair co-owners Jeanine van Kradenburg and Helene Judge planting fruit trees.

This result was not without a lot of effort.

There was an army of people involved to achieve this result including the local Waste Management team who provided the bins and cartage.

Every vendor was rung and supported to get on board with the plans and a waste buster team were trained to help visitors drop their waste in to the right bin.

The crew from Organic Wealth sorted and cleaned items that could be recycled to make sure there was no contamination.

Last month the fair organisers got together with the Kāpiti Coast District Council parks team to plant the established fruit trees purchased from Harrison's Gardenworld.

The community fruit orchard is located along the path that leads from Guildford Drive and connects with the carpark at the end of Scaife Drive.

"We planted a Liberty Heritage apple, Granny Smith apple, Duffs Early Jewel plum, Yen Ben lemon and a Meyer lemon so when next wandering through the Mazengarb Reserve, keep a look out and watch them grow.

"We can't wait for them to them to start producing fruit for the community to tuck-in whenever they are passing.

"At this year's fair on Saturday, December 5 we are aiming to divert 90 per cent of waste from landfill and to plant more fruit trees this time next year in 2021."