Kai Kitchen and South Taranaki District Council team up to reduce waste

The South Taranaki District Council (STDC) has teamed up with the Kai Kitchen Trust to help it minimise waste and become a zero waste organisation by providing biodegradable home-compostable packaging.

The Kai Kitchen Trust is a local Taranaki-based registered charity, working on alleviating child poverty through "kai and kindness".

The trust provides more than 400 lunches to 18 different schools across the Taranaki region every week for children who would otherwise go without.

As part of its mission to minimise waste, the council's environment and sustainability team will provide biodegradable home-compostable packaging for Kai Kitchen's kid's lunches to be used instead of the zip-lock plastic bags and plastic wrap used previously.

Once the lunches have been eaten, the packaging will be collected with any leftover food scraps and sent for commercial composting.

"Kai Kitchen is an awesome local charity, providing hundreds of kids with healthy lunches every week. STDC are proud to support them to become more environmentally sustainable, by reducing the amount of disposable plastic they use, and making sure their packaging is entirely compostable," says Rebecca Martin, STDC environment and sustainability manager.

"This partnership will also help council achieve some of our environmental sustainability goals, which are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, designed to be a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all."

Kai Kitchen representative Tane Houston says the trust is very excited to be working with the council on this project.

"We absolutely look forward to playing our part in building a sustainable future for our tamariki and our community."

The Kai Kitchen zero waste initiative will be funded by the Government's waste minimisation levy.

This Government levy is applied to waste disposed at solid waste facilities and then redistributed to councils for use in waste minimisation initiatives which focus on diverting waste from landfill.

The Kai Kitchen will start its trial with the new biodegradable and compostable packaging products in the first week of Term 3.