A food waste trial could divert 3000 tonnes of organic waste from Nelson city’s landfill every year, new data has revealed.
The Organic Kitchen Waste Trial began in February with about 300 households randomly selected to take part along a set route.
One hundred and thirty of these homes chose to participate in the trial which sees kitchen waste placed into a 20L bucket instead of the rubbish bin or garbage disposer.
The bucket can be used for food scraps including meat, dairy, bread, fruit and veggies, and is swapped out with a clean one once a week via kerbside collection before being processed by Community Compost.
Nelson City Council business unit manager solid waste, Margaret Parfitt, says the data shows, on average, households are throwing away 5.5kg of food waste every week.
“That’s 14L of kitchen waste. We’re not surprised really. We’ve known for a long time that too much organic material is going to landfill and a lot of that is kitchen waste.”
She says if the trial continues at the same rates, it suggests NCC could divert 3000 tonnes of organic waste from landfill every year.
Margaret says that as organic waste breaks down in landfill it produces CO2 but also the greenhouse gas methane, which she says is 16 times more damaging than CO2.
“If we can divert those organics from landfill, it will also eliminate 5700 tonnes of CO2 but actually what’s more important is that we don’t have that methane production.”
She says at the end of the trial, data will be analysed and a decision will be made on whether to roll the collection out across the city.
“We want to reduce waste to landfill per capita by 10 per cent by 2030, there’s lots of tools in the toolbox and lots of things we are doing to divert waste, but this trial will be a significant one in terms of landfill.”
