Liam Prince, founder of The Rubbish Trip. Prince and partner Hannah Blumhardt educate New Zealanders about living with zero waste. Photo / Solene News & Land
Liam Prince has lived without a rubbish bin for more than seven years. Prince is co-founder of The Rubbish Trip, Takeaway Throwaways campaign, deputy chair of Aotearoa Plastic Pollution Alliance and a jazz drummer. Recently made compost manager for Kaicycle, he shares his story ahead of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, September 29.
When I talk with people who've known my parents a long time, they tell me mum and dad were total hippies back in the day. Which surprises me a little, as I never saw that side of them. That said, dad has been following climate change since the early '90s, although environmental concerns weren't on my radar 'til later. Dad was also a firefighter, and when I was young, I was more excited about riding in fire engines.
Growing up in Palmerston North, sport and science were my things and when I was really young, I thought I'd be an inventor, inspired by Wallace and Gromit. Towards the end of high school, when you have to choose a career, I was torn between music or accountancy. I wrestled with it for a bit, then chose the thing that gave me joy.
When I started music school in Wellington, I became more aware of environmental and social degradation. This led to a small crisis, as I worried that jazz drumming was self-indulgent because it didn't do anything to help the world. At the end of my first year, I went to Student Support to discuss transferring to horticulture, but they helped me see that, although music isn't practical like science is, it is important for humanity, because music has the power to connect us, and it helps people appreciate beauty.
I finished my music degree with no regrets, and I also started thinking about what I could do, as an individual, to be more useful, but first I went travelling for a year. Not so much to find myself, as I was comfortable with the idea of being a musician, more to explore. I wanted to see how other people lived, and to experience music in other lands. I stumbled upon some incredible jazz jam sessions in bars and clubs in places like Amsterdam, Berlin and Edinburgh. But I was also shocked at the litter in places like Turkey and Georgia.
Entire fields of rubbish and plastic. Having grown up in the era of Be A Tidy Kiwi, I'd never seen anything like it.
Before I went travelling, I met my partner Hannah at the Hare Krishna place in Wellington. On Sundays you could do yoga, chanting and meditation then have a three-course vegan meal all for $5, although we were there more for the food than the spiritual awakening. We were travelling at the same time, and when we were about to leave Europe, Hannah showed me the photos by Gregg Segal, of people lying on piles of a week's worth of their own rubbish, and we started talking about living waste-free. I was like, "let's start tomorrow" and Hannah was like "whoa, let's wait 'til we're back in New Zealand, and start fresh".
Once home, we hit the ground running, and it was easier than we thought it'd be. It just took some planning. We even made our own toiletries out of baking soda. Tracking our waste for the first five and a half years, we sent just 7.8kg of waste to landfill. There was also a little recycling, mainly wine bottles, but now you can buy wine on tap. But the hardest thing was talking about it, because it was very difficult to articulate what we were doing, without making people feel guilty or defensive, which we didn't want.
After living the zero waste lifestyle for about 18 months, we decided to give a talk for Plastic Free July in 2016. We put it on Facebook and, thinking it would be quite small, we chose a small venue, but more than 200 people showed up. The place was packed, with people outside listening through windows. Afterwards we were asked to give talks at schools and workplaces and it grew to the point that The Rubbish Trip quickly became a fulltime job.
When we realised how much interest there was, we took the message on the road. Of course we thought about the travel side of things a lot. Obviously air travel is inconsistent with our message, so we bought a small fuel-efficient car and put our bikes on the back. Driving the longer distances, we did a systematic loop of the North Island, then the South Island, and whenever we get somewhere, we'd cycle around. We were still going much longer than we'd anticipated when we decided to try without a car, but we weren't game to cycle everywhere, so we sold the car, and either hitch-hiked or used public transport. Over a year of not driving we calculated that we saved nearly two tonnes of Co2.
Three years later, we were still going strong, then Covid hit and we returned to Wellington. As I'd become more interested in food waste, I was keen to be more involved with urban farming and local composting initiatives. I was particularly fascinated with an initiative called Kaicycle. I love their vision of offering urban farms and composting hubs in every neighbourhood, and about eight months ago I landed my dream job as compost manager for Kaicycle.
But composting is only one way to deal with food waste, because if we're not eating what's still edible, it's still wasted, and that's a terrible shame. Which is where Kaicycle comes in, offering composting services for homes, offices and small businesses. We also work with the people we collect food scraps from, helping them think more about what they give us, because I feel so disheartened when we collect edible food to turn into compost. I suspect a lot of workplaces get a fruit delivery for staff on Mondays, so they chuck out the leftover fruit on Friday, even if it's still perfectly good. Obviously we take some of it home, but we also want to help clients stop that sort of waste.
We're also pushing for clients to stop accepting compostable packaging, because it's still single use, and it still needs plants grown to make it, and it has a big environmental footprint. Then, even if the thing does get composted, a lot of that packaging is full of additives to make it grease or water resistant, and those things aren't good for the soil or human health. And even if it is safe, most compostable packaging takes ages to break down and needs very specific conditions, which makes it more complicated, to the point even big commercial-scale composters don't like compostable packaging.
We live in a very wasteful world and I'm doing what I can as an individual, but not everyone has to be as hard-core about living waste free as me and Hannah, as there are super-easy things all of us can do to make a difference. If people ask me what they can do, I say one of biggest things is reducing the quantity of organics going into your rubbish bin. Thirty to 50 per cent of the average bin is full of food and grass clippings, so if you can compost at home, do it. And if you don't have access to compost, Share Waste is a great platform for linking people to composting. Or find a community garden project like Kaicycle. Or maybe you're good at repairing things or mending clothes, or you grow excess food you can share. Bringing your own cup, or taking time to sit down for a meal, those are simple solutions to single-use containers. It's really not that difficult to consume less.
Food waste is one of the most pressing issues facing society. Our current food system is so wasteful, whether it's the impact of growing food, the packaging or transport, but there are different ways of doing things, to rethink how our food system works. Which is why I love urban farming and local-scale composting initiatives like Kaicycle and various other organisations that do amazing work to reduce waste. I really admire Kaibosh, how they redistribute tonnes of food to people who might otherwise go hungry. Or Everybody Eats, who make delicious kai from ingredients that would otherwise be wasted, and their pay what you can afford model, rather than setting a price, is so cool. There are so many excellent food waste projects happening now, but at the heart of it, we need to change our entire food system.
www.kaicycle.org.nz
www.therubbishtrip.co.nz
Time running out to submit to EPA on Te Awamutu's waste-to-energy plant.