The Post: Wellington’s new waste plan is a step toward a greener city

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In the late 1970s, my grandmother Kae Miller was briefly famous for persuading the Porirua City Council to let her live on its landfill, as a protest against excess consumption and waste. A one-woman tip shop, operating out of a shed made from old packing crates, the “Porirua tip lady” – as she was known – helped visitors re-use rather than discard their goods, until the council changed its tune and evicted her a couple of years later.

Half a century on, Kae would have been dismayed to see waste piling ever-higher – but heartened by the signs that, at long last, those piles might soon start shrinking.

Of particular note: without much fanfare, many local councils have started weekly kerbside collections of food scraps. Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, New Plymouth, Timaru and Tauranga all do it. The latter estimates it has halved the volume of waste going to landfill, turning 10 million kg of food scraps into compost for farms and orchards instead.

Next up is my hometown, Wellington. Amidst the city council’s infighting and dysfunction, few have noticed one of the bright spots in its recently approved long-term plan: a major upgrade to the way the capital handles its waste.

This re-think has been a long time coming. For years, the council was – bizarrely – barred from shrinking the Southern Landfill, because sewage had to be piped there and, under a set formula, mixed one part sludge to four parts rubbish.

So the new Moa Point plant – well over-budget, admittedly – doesn’t just transform sludge treatment: it’s the foundation stone for wider reductions in waste. Whereas the council had planned a new 100-year landfill, it can now make do with a 35-year extension of the current one.

Progress, like something mechanical, clicks together slowly, incrementally. Local councils are constantly under attack but, on this issue at least, Wellington is heading in the right direction. Next up: kerbside organics collection, starting in 2027.

Food scraps and garden waste make up a startling 57% of Wellingtonians’ weekly kerbside rubbish. Even when one includes waste from demolition and other commercial sources, organic material comprises one-quarter of the Southern Landfill. Starting to divert that – as well as the roughly one-quarter of landfill made up of sludge – could be transformative.

It matters for the climate, too. When food scraps are properly composted with plenty of oxygen around, they don’t release vast amounts of methane; but when flattened under the landfill’s oxygen-less piles of rubbish, they do. Nearly one-tenth of our planet-heating methane emissions come from organic waste.

Ideally, we wouldn’t need organics collection because everyone would do their own composting. But, as an ardent composter myself, I can tell you that’s totally unrealistic: most people lack the required space, knowledge and commitment. A council trial in 2022 showed kerbside collection works twice as well as trying to get people home composting.

And once the green matter is collected from its sealed containers kerbside, private operators can turn it into compost and clean energy. What was once waste becomes profit. It’s a sizeable step towards a circular economy that finds new life for materials rather than simply discarding them.

Some councillors complain that this isn’t “core” business, but tackling waste is surely one of the basics. Surveys and submissions show residents back the organics plan. And what, in any case, is a more “core” activity than protecting the planet?

The organics collection will also prompt further change. So much green matter having been redirected, rubbish collection will drop from weekly to fortnightly, collected mostly via bins not bags. Recycling, though largely unchanged, will be slightly enhanced.

Collection will become more efficient, too. Today, 60% of Wellingtonians pay for costly and inefficient private rubbish collection, requiring multiple unco-ordinated trucks to circulate around the suburbs.

Under the new system, most residents will be covered by a co-ordinated council scheme, albeit one that’s still contracted out. This should save money: the scheme’s estimated cost is no more than $7.21 a week per household, less than most pay for private collection. (Within that, the organics component will be up to $2.90 a week.)

The waste plan is, inevitably, imperfect. At least initially, the new collection system won’t touch the city centre, owing to concerns about bins cluttering up packed CBD streets and inadequate waste storage areas in apartment blocks.

Meanwhile, households who already compost, and otherwise minimise their waste, will subsidise those who don’t. But as a member of the former club, I’m able – and happy – to take that hit for the greater good.

Organics collection is, like recycling, low down the hierarchy of waste-minimisation activities. We must do more to prevent food waste occurring in the first place: reform supermarket practices, buy only what we need, and not let food go off.

But council-run composting is still a great innovation – and one which would, I think, meet with my grandmother’s approval.