Our Better Journey | On Waste
Our small team has been making a conscious effort to minimise our waste going to landfill, and over the past couple of months we have put a number of new practices in place to divert some of our waste to a better place; composting and recycling have become front of mind and we’ve been able to implement these schemes seamlessly into our day to day operations.
Food and Beverage Carton Recycling Scheme
We are proud to now be a drop off point for collection of Food and Beverage Cartons - one of four collection locations in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Last week we were sent a collection bin from The Food & Beverage (F&B) Carton Recycling Scheme (which is part of the Packaging Forum), who work with saveBOARD in Hamilton to turn these cartons into affordable, sustainable, low carbon building supplies.
The scheme is funded by member companies who produce food and beverage items supplied in these kinds of containers; think alternative and UHT milks, liquid stock, Fresh Up Juice and Up’n’Go drinks. A growing number of companies are holding themselves accountable for the waste they produce and together with saveBOARD and F&B Carton Recycling Scheme, since February this year they have found a solution to these products being made with circularity in mind.
Our current offering of four different alternative milks were all going to landfill once empty - though we knew this was not ideal, we were under the impression there was no solution for these containers. After some research we got in contact wit F&B Carton Recycling Scheme and learnt a lot from the scheme’s manager Graham Burrell; the solution to send these to Hamilton for recycling and repurposing was a no-brainer for us to go ahead with. The bin we’ve been provided to put our own containers in now sits proudly at the front of our Cellar Door; we invite and encourage our customers (or anyone!) who use these containers at home to bring them in and drop them into this bin, and we’ll ensure they’re sent up to saveBOARD (or another recycler) to give them a new life and divert them from landfill.
All we require from you to recycle these cartons successfully is to fully cut open each carton so it lies flat, give it a clean, then simply pop it into our collection bin. A very easy process, we’ve been able to add this to our daily jobs list at the cellar door; a very minor inconvenience but a big impact on doing good for the environment. Upon collecting these cartons we realised just how many we’ve already diverted from the rubbish bin in the first few weeks, they certainly add up quickly. It may not be a perfect solution to waste, but much better than before.
Bottle Top Recycling
With the assistance of Richmond Community Garden’s Riverlution Eco Hub we are now able to divert all of our milk bottle lids from landfill. When we learnt that our empty A2 glass bottle collection does not include bottle tops (they can’t be reused due to the date being printed on each lid) and kerbside recycling bins don’t accept metal lids*, we needed to find a way to recycle them!
Lucky for us, Gemma lives close by to Ricmond’s Riverlution Eco Hub where there’s a large recycling centre for many items not accepted in council recycling bins. Along with the last of our blue milk and other plastic bottle tops we made our first drop off last week and will continue to recycle all of these lids as opposed to sending them to landfill.
One of our regular customers had first told us about this scheme when we were using plastic lids and was taking them for us before she moved away so this is a shout out to thank Leila for the great idea on recycling bottle tops! We encourage our East Christchurch locals to check out the wonderful work the team at Riverlution is doing and see what items from your household you may be surprised to recycle here! Riverlution Eco Hub is located at 46A Vogel St, Richmond.
Compost Collection
Though we have been composting our food scraps for as long as we’ve been able to via the council green bin, we’re now getting them picked up by Michael from Phillipstown Community Hub - the volunteers here use the compost to grow vegetables which are harvested and donated to their Pataka Kai/community pantry for the local community, and also run workshops and events to teach the local community about composting and gardening. Michael also collects a portion of our chaff, sacks and leftover pastries from time to time - every little helps and we’re happy to see our waste go to good use with our Phillipstown neighbours.
*note - correction made, previously stated metal lids larger than jam jar lids could be recycled but no metal lids can go into council kerbside recycle bins