Trial for South Taranaki businesses to compost organic waste

The South Taranaki Disrict Council is supporting a trial for businesses to compost their organic waste.

South Taranaki District Council is on a mission to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

STDC is supporting a trial for businesses to compost their organic waste, using funding from the Ministry for the Environment Waste Disposal Levy.

STDC environment and sustainability manager Rebecca Martin says that currently, approximately 30 per cent of the District's waste to landfill is actually organic or food waste that should be composted.

"An easy way to reduce this is to encourage people to compost their food and organic waste. Most residents can easily compost at home, but for many businesses this is not an easy option," says Rebecca.

To address this problem, STDC has recently partnered with a commercial composting company, EasyEarth, based in Whanganui.

EasyEarth will be starting a trial to see how many businesses are willing to sign up to a weekly commercial composting collection on the collection route from Whanganui to Hāwera. The trial will initially run to June 2020.

"If EasyEarth can successfully sign up enough businesses to make their collection run viable for the long-term, we hope they will be able to expand to the entire district in late 2020 – so the more business that get on board to support this initiative, the more likely it will be to continue"

Rebecca says EasyEarth will do weekly runs to collect organic waste/compost bins from businesses that they sign up, and then replace the bin they collect with a clean one.

"This involves a bin getting dropped at each facility for organic waste/food waste/compostable waste, and picked up on a weekly basis."

Several STDC facilities have already signed up for the trial, including the LibraryPlus centres in Hāwera, Waverley and Pātea, the district museum in Pātea, the TSB Hub and Council's main administrative building in Hāwera.

Business owners in Hāwera, Pātea, Waverley and Waitotara can find more information, check out the options for their premises, and sign up with EasyEarth at www.easyearth.co.nz/our-services/work