The shopping mall that’s going to waste

Rubbish each year from Sylvia Park equivalent in weight of two Boeing 747s

New Zealand’s largest mall, Sylvia Park, generates 600 tonnes of waste per year — and around 50 per cent or 300 tonnes of that is food waste. The Auckland mall fills up 14 threecubic metre bins of waste each day, the equivalent in weight of two Boeing 747 aircraft, and chews through enough cardboard to fill eight swimming pools each day or clad 3800 houses per year.

Waste from its food court fills up 60 bins each day which are disposed of three times a week.

Food waste is a $1.8 billion problem in New Zealand, with around an eighth of what Kiwis buy each week being thrown away.

Research shows those who eat out more than three times a week are the more likely to waste food.

Food waste which goes to landfill rots, releasing methane, which is harmful for the environment.

While household food waste can be managed through composting, for the commercial world, most waste from cafes, restaurants and food operators ends up in landfill.

Love Food Hate Waste project manager Jenny Marshall said New Zealand’s hospitality industry, particularly food courts and restaurants and hotels offering buffets, were big food waste generators.

“A lot of the food we throw away is what we call avoidable food waste — food that could be eaten. We’re not necessarily throwing away peelings and scraps, we throw a huge amount of edible food away,” Marshall said.

“Most of it goes to landfill, some of it goes for composting. Construction waste, when it goes to landfill, it just sits there, it doesn’t break down. Food going to landfill is a major source for emissions from the waste sector.”

Marshall said it was hard to quantify how much organic waste went to landfill each year as Government does not collect statistics on it.

In terms of scale, New Zealand’s 1.4 million families waste more than the country’s 20,000 cafes and restaurants and 300 supermarkets combined, but repurposing businesses’ food waste was a challenge, she said.

Auckland has two commercial composting facilities making collections but Christchurch, Queenstown and Dunedin have none. “The big challenge is access to infrastructure and if you do want to divert your food waste to landfill, particularly for businesses, you’ve got somewhere to put it.” Kiwi Property national facilities manager Jason Happy said the NZX-listed property company, which owns and operates Sylvia Park mall and other shopping and dining precincts around the country, was

HWatch the video nzherald.co.nz/ business focused on reducing the waste sends landfill.

It began its waste management programme in 2003 and now turns its food waste into compost and byproducts like coffee grind into fertilisers.

Kiwi Property generates 900 tonnes of waste each year, or 8200 kg per day, from its various retail sites. It has an A- carbon rating, the highest of any firm listed on the NZX.

Happy said it did not cost “much” to run its waste management plan, and retailers in its precincts were coming increasingly getting onboard.

“Any form of a recycling programme takes a good deal of constant maintenance and retailers are engaging . . . with the younger generation coming through there’s a much higher expectation that it should be the case and so that engagement is getting a little bit easier,” he said. it