Auckland's food scrap bins

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HelloThere

168 posts

Master Geek

#3220423 19-Apr-2024 20:06

neb: I wonder what happened to the remaining 66-75% of the bins?

I emailed my local council to come and collect it a couple of times with no response so I took it and left it on their door step. Better that they have it to replace any damaged ones than it taking up room at my place.

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ockel

2031 posts

Uber Geek

#3220427 19-Apr-2024 20:24

cddt:

ockel:

Auckland Council says they are on target to collect 35-40,000T of food waste.

Even using a conservative measure that's still tens of thousands of tons of CO2e emissions (primarily CH4) avoided...

You're absolutely right. Auckland Council estimate that we're currently saving 25,000T of C02e emissions. Or about 0.045T per HH per year. Even if we take food scraps to zero we're saving 0.1T per HH per annum. We're awesome.

cddt

1447 posts

Uber Geek

#3220443 19-Apr-2024 21:17

ockel:

You're absolutely right. Auckland Council estimate that we're currently saving 25,000T of C02e emissions. Or about 0.045T per HH per year. Even if we take food scraps to zero we're saving 0.1T per HH per annum. We're awesome.

Do I detect sarcasm? There's no reason not to pick the low hanging fruit just because some of the other fruit is harder to reach...

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ockel

2031 posts

Uber Geek

#3220535 20-Apr-2024 09:25

cddt:

ockel:

You're absolutely right. Auckland Council estimate that we're currently saving 25,000T of C02e emissions. Or about 0.045T per HH per year. Even if we take food scraps to zero we're saving 0.1T per HH per annum. We're awesome.

Do I detect sarcasm? There's no reason not to pick the low hanging fruit just because some of the other fruit is harder to reach...

To put so much emission analysis into the DWWMP and to tout the C02 savings is tantamount to greenwashing. Its actually inconsequential when you look at the volumes and should be viewed as a minor benefit not a key driver.

IMHO the focus on the waste stream that contributes 40% of the 20% of total waste for such a high relative cost for disposal highlights the poor analysis in the plan. The next step to reduce collection frequency to fortnightly again focuses all the attention on the smallest waste producers (the focus will be on the remaining 60% of 20% of waste streams).

Ignoring the C&D and commercial/industrial waste producers which account for 80% of waste is a travesty. C&D are a greater waste stream than all of the households combined. Concrete and rubble account for more tonnage to landfill than food waste. Its cheaper to dump concrete (compared to general waste) and there are zero drivers to recycling concrete. Why? How about some innovate thinking to reduce our paper wastage (which incidentally have higher emissions that food waste)?

Priorities are completely wrong.

cddt

1447 posts

Uber Geek

#3220644 20-Apr-2024 13:29

ockel:

To put so much emission analysis into the DWWMP and to tout the C02 savings is tantamount to greenwashing. Its actually inconsequential when you look at the volumes and should be viewed as a minor benefit not a key driver.

IMHO the focus on the waste stream that contributes 40% of the 20% of total waste for such a high relative cost for disposal highlights the poor analysis in the plan. The next step to reduce collection frequency to fortnightly again focuses all the attention on the smallest waste producers (the focus will be on the remaining 60% of 20% of waste streams).

Ignoring the C&D and commercial/industrial waste producers which account for 80% of waste is a travesty. C&D are a greater waste stream than all of the households combined. Concrete and rubble account for more tonnage to landfill than food waste. Its cheaper to dump concrete (compared to general waste) and there are zero drivers to recycling concrete. Why? How about some innovate thinking to reduce our paper wastage (which incidentally have higher emissions that food waste)?

Priorities are completely wrong.

I see your point, but don't understand all your acronyms.

As an individual, I can't do anything about construction and demolition waste. I can't do anything about commercial and industrial waste.

I can't even reasonably reduce my transport emissions unless I want to lose my job and then lose the roof over my family's heads.

I can compost though...

But I do agree that government (local and central) priorities for emissions reductions are wrong, because they ignore the biggest emitters and only tinker around the edges.

My referral links: BigPipe | Mercury

neb

11294 posts

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#3220721 20-Apr-2024 18:20

ockel: Priorities are completely wrong.

It's always easier to engage in a grand production of stopping up the mouse holes in the corner than to deal with the fact that an entire wall and half the roof are missing. Many years ago I was in a talk by an automotive engineer on dealing with pollution from cars. He pointed out that making an already quite efficient small car ever more efficient was pointless when the best-selling car in the US was (and still is) the F-150 and friends, a giant gas-guzzling pollution-spewing behemoth.

Handsomedan

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#3221332 22-Apr-2024 12:05

We've been using our bin for a while now.
Family of 4, sometimes 6 (if the GF's come to stay) and we go through a lot of food and have a fair amount of waste.

Between the food scraps bin, recycling and soft plastics recycling (which we take infrequently to our local supermarket for recycling) we have managed to go from a fortnightly large rubbish bin collection to a fortnightly (or sometimes three-weekly) small rubbish bin collection, so it's saved us a little money and the landfill a lot of rubbish.

I can't really complain.

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trig42

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#3221417 22-Apr-2024 13:45

Ours would be a quarter to half full every week, and that is waste that is no longer going into our Red (general rubbish) bin. This means that the red bin doesn't get as full, and that we don't need to empty it as often as the rubbish going in there generally doesn't start stinking and attracting flies/maggots.

I like the food waste bin.

neb

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#3256898 6-Jul-2024 13:25

Just as an FYI, if you take a strip of paper towel or cloth, place it over the serial number on the bin, and drip a bit of turps onto it and leave it for a few minutes to soak in, you can rub off the serial number with a fingernail under a paper towel/cloth, it comes off cleanly. You're then left with recyclable plastic.

In case this is of use to anyone who's run out of ideas on how to return the bin to the council.

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