Tonnes more food scraps are needed for composting system

A Wellington composting collective wants to increase the amount of food scraps it collects to 100 tonnes a year to make more compost for the community.

Kaicycle Composting collected 40.4 tonnes of food scraps during the past year, which it turned into 18 cubic metres of compost and donated to community gardens, māra kai, marae and schools.

A new in-vessel composting machine (which allows the processing of compost without the odours) at a Rongotai warehouse means it can now collect more food scraps on e-bikes from a further 100 central city businesses to turn into compost. It already collects waste from 90 CBD businesses. Businesses can sign up at kaicycle.org.nz/our-services.

Composting manager Kate Walmsley said this was food waste that was diverted from landfill.

When food scraps end up in landfill, they produce methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more damaging than carbon dioxide, Walmsley said.

Wellington City Council doesn’t offer food scrap collections but aims to have some form of organic collection for households by 2030.

“Producing good compost locally means we can support local food growing, which generates a whole range of local benefits,” Walmsley said. Those benefits include supporting community gardens, increasing biodiversity and reducing carbon emissions.

“If we can get dozens or hundreds of urban farms around the city, the positive impacts will really add up,” she said. “But we need a local supply of compost to set up and fuel them.

“This is why we are strong advocates for localised composting, to ensure some of our city’s food scraps are going into producing these local benefits, rather than all being trucked away to large facilities.”

Kaicycle is a non-profit farming collective established in 2015 in Newtown to grow food for locals, composting and education.

“Producing good compost locally means we can support local food growing, which generates a whole range of local benefits.”

Kate Walmsley,

Kaicycle Composting managing