How much Whanganui is sending to landfill

The council's draft Waste Management and Minimisation Plan will be presented to the council later this year. Photo / NZME

New data shows Whanganui is sending a third more waste to landfill than the national average.

Waste to landfill per capita in Whanganui was 720kg per person (for the 2024/25 financial year), well up on the New Zealand average of 530kg per person.

“Organic material, which is food and garden waste, in our roadside landfill bins still remain a key issue, making up over 40% of total landfill bin composition,” Whanganui District Council waste services manager Morgan Harrison said.

The results come from the district’s latest waste assessment presented to councillors on May 5.

As part of the assessment, the council spoke with community groups, business mana whenua and waste operators “to understand key issues, challenges and gaps”.

“The biggest issue our community perceives is addressing illegal dumping needs to be improved,” she said.

The Chronicle reported in February that from July 2025 to December 2025, 12.61 tonnes of illegally dumped materials had been sent to landfill.

For the six months prior, 7.94 tonnes were sent to landfill.

Harrison’s report to the council said a waste analysis was undertaken last September, to understand the composition in residential rubbish bins and bags, rural skip bins and public and private transfer stations.

Construction and demolition waste made up a large portion of waste to landfill – 14,540 tonnes out of 28,100 tonnes in 2024/25.

“Over the term of the (council’s) 2021-2027 WMMP (Waste Management and Minimisation Plan), an additional 15,000 tonnes of waste was expected to be diverted (from landfill), it said.

“However, it is now estimated that approximately 4200 tonnes of material will be diverted by the end of the WMMP’s timeframe.”

The report said establishing a service to collect, sort and divert construction and demolition waste was underway.

Whanganui District Council waste services manager Morgan Harrison.

A business plan would be developed for the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre “to guide future services and operational models to achieve it”.

The council introduced kerbside recycling on July 1, 2024, but a kerbside food scraps collection service was pulled at the last minute, in March last year.

Harrison said the recycling service had improved waste recovery.

But data collected in the past was not as thorough as the latest assessment, so the council did not have a clear understanding of how much it had improved, she said.

“That’s also due to new regulatory compliance at MFE [Ministry for the Environment], where transfer stations have to provide more comprehensive data.”

According to the waste assessment, kerbside rubbish collection in Whanganui (for landfill) rose from 7600 tonnes in 2022/23 to 10,200 tonnes in 2024/25.

Rubbish from commercial collections also increased, from 5400 tonnes in 2022/23 to 9300 tonnes in 2024/25.

Harrison’s report said organic materials made up 48% of kerbside landfill bin composition, with sanitary items at 12.1%, plastics at 10.9% and paper at 10.4%.

She told councillors sanitary items included feminine hygiene products, tissues, nappies, wet wipes and medical waste.

The waste assessment was a comprehensive document, and Whanganui was one of the first councils to include reuse data, she said.

“We’ve gone out to second-hand shops around the district and asked them to do a survey for us over a four-week period.

“It shows we have got quite a vibrant second-hand community, with approximately 340,000 items passing through second-hand stores every year.”

She said a draft of the new WMMP would be presented to the council for formal consultation later this year, for adoption in 2027.

Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.