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Scoop the latest ways to reduce waste from your food, clothing, kids, pets, home and garden
Bite 58 | Packaging Wars
Frustrated that you can't recycle your ice cream containers, yoghurt pottles or plastic trays. Why not make it into 'Golden Trash'. Gather up your clean plastics and ask your local kindergarten, playcentre or school if they would like them for art & craft activities.
According to the Ministry for the Environment, each New Zealand consumes 31 kilograms of plastic packaging per year. Plastic makes up 10 percent of Southland’s waste stream by weight or 113 tonnes per week.
Did you know... over 50 percent of packaging waste is imported into New Zealand.
Bite 1 | The Good Scrap Heap
Instead of dumping the lawn clippings, leaves and pruning’s into the refuse wheelie bin, turn them into compost, and save energy and landfill space. Garden and food waste is the largest component of our waste stream (behind timber) and makes up roughly 42 percent of the Regional Landfill. Composting is nature’s way of turning garden and food waste into a reusable product that is great for your garden. By composting our garden and food waste we can:
- Reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by 42 percent
- Reduce the generation of methane (harmful greenhouse gas) and leachate (pollutant of groundwater and soil)
- Reduce the number of heavy vehicles, trucking waste to landfill by almost 50 percent
- Convert a ‘waste material’ into a valuable soil that is great for both vegetable and flower gardens
- Save money on Waste Transfer Station fees and no longer need to purchase compost from garden centres
Do your bit to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and compost your garden and food waste.
Related Links
- Making Compost
- Put waste to work in your garden (Bite 4)
- Grasscycling (Bite 7)
Bite 4 | Put waste to work in your garden
Save yourself the fuel and disposal costs by sweeping up the fallen leaves and flowers into your flower beds or under shrubs. This will increase your soils fertility and reduce the need for frequent watering. If you want to go that extra mile, run your lawn mower over the leaves and flower before you sprinkle them over your garden. Grass cuttings can also be spread over your garden’s soil and it will help prevent weeds from growing as quickly, which means more time to sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy your garden.
Related Links:
- The Good Scrap Heap (Bite 1)
- Grasscycling (Bite 7)
Bite 7 | Grasscycling
Grasscycling is an easy way to a healthy lawn and a great way to recycle valuable nutrients for free. Grass cycling is leaving clippings on the lawn when mowing. The grass clippings will quickly decompose, returning valuable nutrients to the soil. Grasscycling saves time, money and protects the environment.
- Mowing time is reduced, since bagging and disposal of clippings is eliminated
- Cut grass add beneficial organic matter to the soil – a free fertiliser that produces healthy, green lawns
- Reduces the need to fertiliser and water your lawn, therefore minimising potentially toxic runoff entering stormwater drains, lakes, creeks and rivers.
- Reduces the volume of grass dumped in the landfill
Grass clippings are far too valuable to throw away as it allows green material to be reused in our own backyards.
Related Links
- Grasscycling
- The Good Scrap Heap (Bite 1)
- Put waste to work in your garden (Bite 4)
Bite 64 - Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB)
The use of a supermarket plastic bag can be counted in minutes – the length it takes to get from the supermarket to our homes. Plastic bags however, take between 15 and 1,000 years to break down in the environment.
According to the Ministry for the Environment, each New Zealand consumes 31 kilograms of plastic packaging per year. Plastic makes up 10 percent of Southland’s waste stream by weight or 113 tonnes per week.
By Bringing Your Own Bag (BYOB) you can save fuel, money and protect the environment:
• Stops plastic bags becoming windblown litter. Plastic bag litter ends up one our beaches, streets and parks. They can block drains and trap birds and other animals.
• Saves fuel – the amount of petroleum used to make one plastic bag would drive a car about 115 metres. According to the Plastic Shopping Bag Free website, the 6.9 billion plastic bags we use every year is enough to drive a car 800 million kilometres or nearly 20,000 times around the world.
• Reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by 10 percent.
Related Links
- Plastic Shopping Bag Free
- Packaging Council of New Zealand
