ZERO WASTE AUCKLAND HOUSEHOLD PUTS VIRTUALLY NOTHING IN ITS BIN

Waveney Warth creates no rubbish. Well, almost. The Auckland resident says there is the odd thing she can’t find any way of recycling, such as pill packets and the seals off the top of milk bottles – “plastics composites are diabolical”, she says.

But what her household throws away amounts to less than an Auckland Council rubbish bag a year.

In 2008. when she first took up the challenge of going waste-free for a year, she and her partner produced just 2kgs of waste. They keep the bag of rubbish as a memorial.

Now it’s become a habit, a lifestyle that makes increasing sense as Auckland moves towards a pay-per-throw system of rubbish collection. Being zero waste sounds like an impossible challenge, and as someone who works in waste minimisation for a job she’s not advocating it for everyone.

“For us this has always been a really personal thing,” she says.Her household has an underground worm farm in the front yard into which they drop their dog’s doings through a pipe  – collected in biodegradable bags, of course.

They buy in bulk to avoid excess packaging, including storing 20 litre containers of shampoo and dishwashing liquid in the garage, and getting the butcher to fill a plastic container with mince every couple of months, which they then break up into portions.

Read the full story from Stuff here.