Two thousand food waste kitchen caddys, kerbside bins and compostable bag packs were delivered to all Raglan urban households on Thursday and Friday last week.
On a glorious sunny day, food waste collections began in Raglan West on Monday, August 21, with a total of 360kgs collected. Raglan East food waste collection was carried out on Tuesday, August 22, with 500kgs picked up. That is a total of 860kgs, almost a tonne, of food waste diverted from landfill in one short week.
This amount of food waste is great for Xtreme Zero Waste (XZW) to get their new hot composting system going. Because the bins were delivered last Thursday, Raglan residents only had four days to collect food scraps between bin delivery day and collection day. This week’s collection is now hot composting in our horizontal composting unit, and will become rich, nutritious, super food compost in 12 weeks’ time. It is estimated that around 20% of Raglan’s domestic waste is food waste and XZW hopes the amount of food waste collected will grow significantly over the coming months.
Kerbside food waste collections in Raglan have been made possible as a result of XZW’s research, trialling and roll out, which was funded by the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund and Waikato District Council.
Thank you to Raglan West residents for participating in the trials. Thank you to all the XZW team who have been working hard in difficult conditions this winter to get this service up and running. Finally, thank you to Raglan residents for putting out your food waste.
Xtreme Zero Waste
