Waste minimisation

New Zealanders produce more rubbish per capita than people in most other developed countries. In the year 2000, each person in the Auckland Region produced 750kg of domestic waste.

The North Shore City Refuse collection accepts about 27,000 tonnes of household rubbish goes to landfill each year.

The average bag of mixed domestic rubbish put out for weekly collection contains (by weight):

• 40 to 47% garden and kitchen ‘organic' material
• 26 to 38% paper, card, newspapers, advertising material, packaging
• 8 to 12% plastics
• 4 to 5% glass
• 4 to 6% metals
• 2 to 4% other, including potentially hazardous items like solvents, cleaning and garden chemicals and batteries.

How does our wasteful behaviour contribute to the problem?
We lead busy lives and seek convenience and speed, which often comes in the form of buying packaged foods. Packaging has also become a valuable form of advertising so more products are packaged. While some packaging like cardboard, paper, cans, glass and plastic bottles (grades 1 & 2) can be recycled, a percentage still ends up in landfill.

Land available for dumping (landfilling) rubbish is scarce. In Auckland there are 55 closed landfills and only three operational, and once land is used as a landfill cannot be used for anything else.
Organic materials like food or garden waste create toxic leachate and methane gas when they are buried in a landfill.

What we can do?
We can REDUCE the amount of material we landfill by being aware of product packaging, not buying over-packaged items and making smart purchasing decisions.

We can REUSE what we have to divert materials from the waste-stream either permanently or temporarily.

We can continue RECYCLING using kerbside collections, community recycle depots or other services, and close the loop by buying recycled products.

We can RECOVER energy or nutrients from organic waste like kitchen scraps and garden wastes by using a compost bin or worm farm instead of putting them out for disposal.

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