Compostable Wheelie Bin Liners help reduce Auckland Landfill Waste

Convex Plastics, September 12th, 2011

A new food waste recycling service utilising Convex Plastics’ compostable Greensack wheelie bin liners is helping Auckland businesses significantly reduce the amount of waste they are sending to landfill.

The new `closed loop’ recycling service diverts food waste away from landfill and reprocesses it into a high quality wormacompost™ that returns nutrients to the soil and promotes the healthy growth of commercial crops like kiwifruit, avocados and carrots.

This is achieved by the proactive collection of food waste by Paper Reclaim using Greensack wheelie bin liners, and the composting of the liners and their contents by Envirofert at their multiple-award winning organic waste processing facility at Tuakau, south of Auckland.

Christchurch company Eco-Express NZ Ltd verified the benefits of the Greensack liners for food waste collection by facilitating successful composting trials in Christchurch. They then supplied the liners for the food waste collection service that Paper Reclaim was trialling in Auckland with Enterprise Manukau.

Paper Reclaim has just completed a successful trial of the new ‘Organicycle’ service and is now in the process of launching it throughout the Auckland area. During the trial Paper Reclaim recovered 150 tonnes of food waste using Greensack wheelie bin liners and they expect this to increase to 1300 tonnes per annum once the service expands.

Made from annually-renewable materials derived from cornstarch - Greensack wheelie bin liners have been purpose-designed by Convex Plastics to provide an easy way for restaurants, hotels and commercial kitchens to dispose of their organic waste in an environmentally responsible manner.  Greensack enables food waste to be cleanly and conveniently collected as the whole bag can be composted along with its contents, leaving minimal mess in the bins.
 
Paper Reclaim General Manager Peter Thorne says the Organicycle food waste collection is a natural addition to the wide range of recycling services his company has been providing for over 25 years.

He says, “We specialise in providing collection services for materials that can be reused in an appropriate manner. Envirofert’s fully consented commercial composting service has provided us with an ideal outlet for food waste. Food waste is the heavy part of the waste stream so composting it will be extremely beneficial for the environment. We help our clients streamline their waste collection to make the service as cost effective as possible.”

Westfield and the Crowne Plaza are just two of a growing number of Auckland businesses using Paper Reclaim’s new Organicycle food waste collection service to reduce their landfill waste.

The Crowne Plaza has been using the service throughout its 18 month trial to recycle approximately 4.5 tonnes of food waste each month from its restaurant and conference centre.

Andrew Eadie, Crowne Plaza Assistant Manager Finance and Business Support says the service helps both the hotel and their corporate clients meet their environmental objectives and operate more sustainably, which provides marketing advantages for all parties.

Andrew says, “This service is working well. It has enabled us to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill quite substantially and the compostable bags help reduce contamination and keep our bins a lot cleaner.”

Westfield Manukau City introduced the service on a trial basis in May to recover food waste from its food court. Since then several of their retailers have also started using the service and a trial was started in Westfield St Lukes in August, with Westfield Downtown due to start trialing the service in September.

Westfield National Facilities Manager, Lance Johns says, “The early trial results are looking good. The service is great from a business point of view. Its achieving the objectives of our national sustainability plan, the feedback from our retailers has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are starting to prove that the service is cost effective.”

Westfield Manukau City achieved a cost saving in their first month of using the service by reducing the pick-up frequency of their general waste compactors, and Lance sees further opportunities for cost savings as the service expands.

He says, “In May Paper Reclaim recovered 2.6 tonnes of food waste from our Manukau site and in June the amount rose to 3.5 tonnes after the service started expanding beyond the food court to some of our other tenants. We expect this volume to keep on growing as more of our retailers start using this service.”

The Westfield trial is focusing on optimising the operational aspects of the service such as the loading docks and the food court waste collection stations. Once this has been achieved Westfield will look at rolling out the service to their other sites.

The food waste collected by Paper Reclaim is sent to Envirofert where their consents and capacity enable them to process up to 40,000 tonnes of food waste each year.

Envirofert CEO, Robert Lind says, “Food waste is a major waste product that needs to be diverted from landfill and converted into a beneficial product that assists New Zealand’s productive sector. Kiwifruit growers use a lot of our compost and there is increasing uptake across the horticulture sector.”

Avocado growers are also enthusiastic about Envirofert’s wormacompost™. Along with having a high nutrient analysis that horticulturalists believe will benefit the trees, the wormacompost™ also includes all the waste from the avocado processing company Fressure Foods, of which about 90% of the shareholders are New Zealand avocado growers.

Based approximately 10km from Envirofert at Pareata near Pukekohe, Fressure Foods makes all natural Avocado Spread and Mild and Spicy Guacamole from fresh avocados grown on orchards from the Bay of Plenty to the far north. Fressure Foods generates around 3 tonnes of waste avocado skins and seeds every day, which is sent directly to Envirofert to be included in their compost.

Fressure Foods Managing Director, Joe Clark says, “Operating sustainably is very important to us and this is one of the ways we achieve it.  A large amount of mulch is used in the avocado industry to condition the soil and a lot of our growers are using the Envirofert compost as part of that mulch, and are seeing some quite good results.”

Wally Colville, a veteran avocado grower of 28 years, has been using Envirofert’s wormacompost™ for about eight months and sees it as a beneficial tool on his orchard.
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Wally says, “Our horticultural advisor is encouraging avocado growers to use it as he believes it will be good for the trees and put valuable nutrients back into the soil. We use it as a planting medium for our new plantings and we also use it to mulch frail trees. We are quite excited about it and we’re pretty sure that it will be really beneficial. We planted 150 replacement trees with it at the beginning of the year and they have done really well so far.”
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Wally runs a 40ha avocado orchard at Houhora in the far north and is a shareholder of Fressure Foods. He started using the wormacompost™ when he found out that Envirofert was recycling avocado waste from the Fressure Foods processing plant.

Convex Plastics is pleased to be a part of a closed loop recycling system that is benefiting the New Zealand environment.

Managing Director Owen Embling says, “We have taken a pioneering role in the development of commercially viable renewable films and have committed a lot of resources to ensure the products we offer add value. It is very encouraging to see our Greensack liners playing a role in such an innovative and vital service.”