Tauranga City Council is offering grants of up to $20,000 for people who come up with a good idea or project that helps reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
Applications for the Resource Wise Community Fund are open until 4pm on May 2 with grants ranging from $1500 to $20,000 from a pool of $50,000.
Environment Committee chairman Steve Morris said the aim of the fund was to support individuals, community groups, businesses, Māori organisations and education providers who want to deliver waste minimisation projects within Tauranga.
"There is considerable scope to reduce waste and prevent useful resources from going to landfill. It's about finding clever, new ideas that need a stepping stone to get off the ground or make it to the next stage.
"It's also about building awareness that disposal should be a last resort," Morris said.
"As a city, we are keen to support initiatives that see resources that would otherwise be sent to landfill, be reused, recycled or recovered instead. Or, better still, innovation that removes the need for those resources to be produced in the first place."
For more information, funding criteria, application guidelines and the online application form, visit www.tauranga.govt.nz/rwcommunityfund
The Resource Wise Community Fund aims to empower communities to:
- Reduce the generation and consumption of materials
- Reuse and repair materials to minimise the generation of waste
- Recycle and compost materials to divert waste from landfill
- Prevent and reduce instances of littering and illegal dumping while promoting waste minimisation
- Enhance the delivery of our Resource Wise behaviour change programmes
