Entry received from: Auckland Council
Category: The GHD Award for Excellence in Environmental Leadership
Delivery of Auckland’s regionwide food scraps collection service was the largest waste services rollout ever undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere. To manage the scale of changes, with every urban resident impacted, it was phased over eight months. Beginning in April 2023, over 460,000 bins and caddies were delivered. To support the rollout extensive communication and community engagement was designed to drive awareness, but most importantly to bring Auckland along on our journey to drive behaviour change.
Auckland has a vision of zero waste by 2040 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The target to reduce residential waste to landfill from 160kg/cap/annum to 110kg/cap/annum is a key contributor to that vision. With food scraps comprising 45% of residential waste, a food scraps collection service was identified and endorsed as a core initiative to meet this target. Food scraps collected from across urban Auckland are consolidated in three facilities across Auckland and then transported to the Ecogas Anaerobic Digestion (AD) processing plant. AD is a natural process where microorganisms break down the food scraps, producing two valuable resources; biogas and digestate. At the AD facility, biogas is used to heat a nearby tomato glass house and this year will provide natural gas back to the national grid. This plant is the first of its kind processing food scraps in New Zealand.
Thank you to our category sponsor