Much of our waste is sent to landfill where it accumulates and takes time to breakdown – in the case of items like plastics, hundreds of years.
Diverting waste from landfill saves money and is good for our environment. It simply makes sense.
Buller District Council’s goal is to reduce how much waste goes to landfill and increase how much we recycle and reuse.
We are also focusing on educating people on what to recycle and how to avoid contaminated material ending up in recycling bins. Unfortunately, contaminated recycling ends up in landfill.
Our long-term vision is to have the community understand their waste consumption, their impact on the environment and commit to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Recycling is the obvious method of minimising waste but here are some other useful techniques for households and individuals:
Shopping smarter
Packaging, single use items and disposable products create waste and impact our environment. You can shop smarter by buying only what you need, buying reusable items like beeswax wraps, drink bottles and straws, and buying previously loved items.
The Ministry for the Environment has some great advice how you can reduce your contribution to the tones of rubbish filling New Zealand’s landfill each year. You can help by shopping smarter, host a low waste BBQ and reducing your waste at home.
For advice, background info and solutions tailored to our home – the Buller District- check out the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Facebook page.
Regular audits
We encourage businesses and households to do a rubbish audit, identifying products that are unable to be recycled or reused and finding eco-friendly alternatives. Waste audits can have many benefits to a business and household, including significant financial savings, national impact and consumer satisfaction.
Composting
With food waste, we encourage composting and growing your own produce.
Food scraps and cardboard are perfect to start a compost and the goodness of your home-made compost will enhance the soil quality in your garden. Check out this sweet as video from Mitre 10 and start your compost today reducing your waste.
If you need some inspiration and want some more help, get in touch with a community group who runs a community garden like Number 37 community house. They have a wonderful garden to get you inspired and these guys offer frequent composting workshops.
There are also some great tips on how to get started on the Love Food, Hate Waste website. We don’t collect food waste here in Buller, so this is a great way to help out the environment.