Putting green waste in your rubbish wheelie bin or bag is sending it straight to landfill where the lack of oxygen means it will not compost naturally. We opened up Waipā rubbish bags and wheelie bins and found 8% of all our kerbside rubbish was garden waste, which for all of the houses in Waipā would be 1.7 tonnes of garden waste heading off to a landfill each week. That’s a lot of organic of goodness (in addition to 3.6kg per household of food waste) that we could do better with at home by composting, worm farming or using a bokashi system.
If composting isn’t your thing, join Sharewaste which connects people who wish to recycle their food scraps and other organics with their neighbours who are already composting, worm-farming or keep farm animals.
