Cutting down on waste is one the easiest ways for a business to make sustainable improvements. Like rubbish from your home, much of the waste produced by your business can be minimised or recycled and need not end up in a landfill. Minimising your waste will help the environment and save your business money, through reduced raw material purchasing and reduced waste disposal costs. If there is any solid waste left over it can be disposed of at one of the 7 landfills in the Wellington region.

It is recommended to first review your waste by undertaking a waste audit. This helps benchmark your current waste generation and provides a good baseline to compare to when making improvements. Put simply, a waste audit tells you what’s in your rubbish, how much can be recycled, how much is organic, how much should go to a landfill, and so on. It needn’t be complicated or time-consuming. Even looking at just one day’s rubbish will tell you a lot about how your business uses resources. If you need any help with organising a waste audit, please contact our Sustainable Business Facilitator on (04) 801 1061 to find out more.  

Once you know the breakdown of your waste, you can then look at a strategy to minimise it. You can minimise your business waste by reduction, re-use, recycling (eg paper, cardboard, plastic, electronic, batteries etc), and composting organic waste (such as from kitchens, food scraps etc). Green waste can be recycled at certain landfills. These landfills also accept a range of used materials for re-use. If you have hazardous waste or are unsure if your waste is hazardous or not, it is advisable to contact a specialist company so that it is disposed of correctly.

To help sort and categorise your waste, you can use the MFE Waste Audit Template ( see Documents at top right of page).

There are many items in your waste that can be recycled.  Click here to look at a directory of recycling companies in the Wellington region

The waste exchange is a unique service that helps businesses connect their unwanted materials and recyclables with new owners through a web-based and free phone forum.

For more information, check out the brochure on the side bar at the right of this screen.

Commercially available worm farms are constructed out of plastic and are about a metre square.  Properly maintained, they are odourless, can be kept inside or out, take up little space, and only need a small amount of time and effect to recycle food waste.

For more information see the Worm Farms PDF at right of page.

Bokashi is a Japanese term that means "fermented organic matter".  It is a bran-based, pleasant smelling material that has been fermented with a liquid concentrate of micro-organisms and dried for storage.  It aids in the fermentation of the organic matter collected in the container.  After fermenting, the waste is buried in the garden where it breaks down very quickly into compost and disappears.  A ten litre bucket plus bokashi is sufficient to deal with the equivalent of about four to six weeks of domestic kitchen waste.

For more information see the Bokashi Bin PDF at right of page.