Auditing our rubbish: Gisborne's food waste excesses 37.4 tonnes per week

Council waste minimisation lead Charlotte Phelps, Waste Watchers director Marty Moffat and GDC solid waste manager Phil Nickerson. Behind them is the team of four who sorted through the contents of 300 rubbish bags and separated the contents into 12 primary categories and 11 secondary categories. The data that falls out of these audits helps councils plan how to tackle the issue of waste. Pictures supplied

Every week, 42.8 percent of what Gisborne households throw away in their kerbside rubbish is food waste, a new survey shows.

“That adds up to a whopping 37.4 tonnes every week of uneaten food that we then pay to truck out of town to a landfill,” a Gisborne District Council statement said.

“We know this because back in May a team of waste auditors came to Gisborne to analyse our community’s rubbish.

“Between May 15 and 17, 300 rubbish bags were chosen at random from across the city on their kerbside collection days.

“In batches of 10 bags, they were weighed at the start and then pulled open so the contents could be separated into 12 primary categories and 11 secondary categories by a team of four.

“The separate categories were weighed again at the end to show what each category weighed.

“The work isn’t as smelly as one might think, and the team who sort through the waste have an interesting time.”

Some of the finds that week included unopened chocolate bars, salmon steaks still in the packaging, a dead mouse, some marijuana and a bong, and one of the weirdest finds was what looked to be a dog poo covered in glitter.

“While the thought of someone going through your rubbish, item by item, might be your worst nightmare, the data that falls out from these waste audits is invaluable,” GDC solid waste manager Phil Nickerson said.

“This data helps the council plan where to aim funding in the future and where education programmes might help.

“It’s called a SWAP audit — Solid Waste Analysis Protocol — and was developed for the Ministry for the Environment to produce waste data that is consistent across the country.

“The largest category of rubbish that was thrown away that week was “organics” which comprised 51.6 percent of the total.”

This was broken down into food waste (42.8 percent), green waste (5.5 percent, and other organics (3.3 percent).

In second and third place was sanitary paper at 13.3 percent), and plastics at 13 percent.

“Council has a requirement to review and update its Waste Minimisation Management Plan (WMMP) every six years and ours is due to begin review.

“The last time data was collected in our region was 2017, for the last WMMP”, Mr Nickerson said.

“This WMMP looks at how we can manage our waste across the rohe and includes moving to a wheelie bin system for kerbside collection in Gisborne.

“This would include a bin for organic food matter to be separated into. We also run education programmes through the Tairāwhiti Environment Centre to encourage people to shop wisely and look at composting options for their homes.”

Leading the waste audit in May were Waste Watchers director Marty Moffat and Waste Not Consulting director Bruce Middleton.

They’ve both been in the business for around 20 years and visit all 67 councils in New Zealand.

Mr Moffat said the data gets people to start thinking about food waste and gives councils a really good indication of what to focus on in the future.

“What we do in Gizzy is what we do all over New Zealand; same procedures and same analysis.”

Mr Middleton said as a result of the work they did, councils know what has been going to landfills for the past 20 years.