It’s official - some central city households now have access to a community composting hub.

The hub, located outside of Sustainability Trust in Wellington, will be a central city food waste drop off point for up to 50 households in the area.

Another hub will be set up in Berhampore in early 2021. Both hubs form part of a network that is connected to the existing Kaicycle Hospital Road Farm.

Joining a hub will be done on a subscription-based service and will cost an average of $4 per household per week. Households collect their food scraps and drop them off.

There’s a Compost Network Manager who will maintain the hubs to make sure they’re producing high-quality compost, and are kept free of offensive odours and rats.

The compost from these hubs will be kept in their communities and given to local food growing projects.

Compost Network Manager, Sheldon Levet, says “demand for a responsible way to deal with food waste is in high demand. We’ve already got a massive waitlist of people who want to be a part of Kaicycle’s Compost Collection Programme. There’s a good chance that many of these people will be transferred to the new compost hub”.

“Currently, about half of what households send to landfill is organic and we have a real opportunity to reduce this significantly with composting schemes like this. We’d like to see these hubs spread across Wellington, surrounded by urban farms and community gardens,” says Levet.

You can learn more about the hubs at www.livingcomposthubs.org.nz and check out the compost hub at our open day on Saturday, 6th March 11 am-1 pm at Sustainability Trust.

Extra information:

Love Food Hate Waste estimates that New Zealand households throw away a whopping 157, 389 tonnes of food each year. This is equivalent to 271 jumbo jets.

When sent to landfill, food waste breaks down very slowly producing methane – a powerful greenhouse gas that is about 28 times stronger than CO2 at warming up the planet.

With landfill levies set to increase to $60 per tonne (currently $10) over the next four years finding an alternative way to reduce food waste to landfill needs to happen.

This pilot project is a collaboration between Kaicycle, Sustainability Trust and GrowSpace Wellington and has been partly funded by the Wellington City Council Waste Minimisation Seed Fund.

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