Marty Hoffart receives Kiwibank Local Hero award

KNZB are delighted to confirm that Marty Hoffart of Keep Tauranga Beautiful received a Kiwibank Local Hero award in a special presentation in Mount Maunganui last night. Marty, along with twenty other Bay of Plenty locals, were presented their awards by Tauranga mayor Greg Brownless at a special ceremony at the Classic Flyers Museum on the 15th November.

After an over the fence conversation with his neighbour Bruce in 1999, Marty joined Bruce on a council-funded mission to install recycling habits in children.

The school programme rapidly snowballed. Bruce and Marty formed a not-for-profit-trust, EERST(Environmental Educationfor Resource Sustainability Trust), that installed recycling bins in every Tauranga school and reduced waste by 70%. If they could do this in Tauranga, they thought, why not the rest of New Zealand? And why not create some incentive, by giving schools trees in return for their paper and cardboard recycling efforts? The resulting Paper4trees scheme is now in 4048 schools from Kaitaia to Bluff with over 170,000 trees planted.

Marty has become New Zealand’s go-to guy for recycling. He regularly speaks at conferences and fronts news items.  He also develops and delivers tertiary level training and chairs the national Community Recycling Network.

Alongside Bruce, Marty was integral in establishing Waste Watchers in 2005.  More recently, Marty noticed Tauranga was missing from the list of regional towns that belonged to the Keep New Zealand Beautiful Network. He’s rectified that by establishing a very active Keep Tauranga Beautiful branch.

Being the dedicated waste warrior that he is Marty truly is a local hero.

Marty Hoffart photo credit – as featured in Uno Magazine