Our Projects

Anchor AIMS Games International Sporting Championship

Waste Watchers have been providing waste minimisation services to the Anchor AIMS Games since 2011. This involves organising recycling stations, a crew to man the recycling stations, working with food vendors to minimise packaging to landfill, and working with the tournament staff to ensure the system will work during the week long event. In 2018, 55% of material generated at the Games was diverted from landfill. This is a fantastic effort considering this is an open event where packaging brought in by the public cannot be controlled. All that can be done in this instance is to continue educating the public via tournament communications.

Bayfair Construction Waste

Waste Watchers provided waste minimisation services for Bayfair Shopping Centre's new development site to help divert as much construction waste as possible from landfill. This project highlighted the need for education on the types of products they are using and waste minimisation practices at builder and supplier level, as well as good communication between all stakeholders. During the project, builders were heard educating each other on the correct use of each of skips provided for separating waste. The project also opened their eyes to the volume of waste that can be produced during construction projects. Going forward, it would be ideal to have waste minimisation embedded in the project from the planning stages to help reduce the volume of waste produced, as well as having robust systems in place for dealing with waste and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Holistic Vets

Holistic Vets had already embraced sustainability programmes at the practice. They had a well-established recycling programme in place and were recycling all office paper, cardboard, plastics, glass, steel and aluminium. They also had a composting programme in place and were reusing wooden pallets and other materials. We found the majority of landfill waste came from the cat cages. The soiled kitty litter made up 90% of the total landfill weight. Our goal was to divert this material from landfill. The product they were using was called Pussydo which is made from 100% virgin sawdust and wood shavings. It is compressed together into wooden pallets made from Pinus radiata. We found a suitable composting facility locally that could safely take the product. As a results, this material is now diverted from landfill and made into compost. This one change means that Holistic Vets now landfill about 900kg annually, down from 7.3 tonnes. Their recycling rate has shot up from 8.2% to 95.9%.

Fresh Choice Omokoroa

Waste Watchers Ltd conducted a site visit and solid waste audit at FreshChoice in Omokoroa. 

Samples of waste were taken from the landfill waste skip bin. After walking through the premises to gain a better understanding of disposal processes, the skip bin was emptied and the contents sorted and weighed to classify the material into categories. Data was obtained with weights and volumes of material were noted. Where exact weights could not be obtained, the figures were estimated based on information provided by the business.

According to the data gathered during the waste audit, it is estimated that Fresh Choice generates approximately 16.7 tonnes of waste to landfill per year, and diverts approximately 150 tonnes each year from landfill.

FreshChoice currently diverts 90% of materials (by weight) from landfill per annum through recycling and reuse. This high diversion rate reflects is a significant investment made in the recycling and waste diversion systems at the business.

Kerbside Domestic Waste Audit

Waste Watchers Ltd was contracted by a local council to conduct a waste audit on domestic kerbside rubbish bags to determine how much of the waste householders were throwing away, could be diverted from landfill. Over the course of a week, we sorted through the contents of 350 kerbside wheelie bins and rubbish bags and sorted the contents into 16 categories. The result was that 70% of what households were throwing away could be diverted from landfill. Now that Council has this information, they can make a plan to help reduce the amount of recyclable or compostable materials going to landfill.