Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage today announced more support for Wanaka Wastebusters to get more people involved in reducing waste.
“We all need to take responsibility for reducing the impacts of waste and showing people how to do this is a great way to reduce waste and our greenhouse gas emissions from waste that goes to landfill,” says Eugenie Sage.
“This initiative is particularly exciting because of its strong community focus.”
$121,827 of funding from the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund will be granted to Wanaka Wastebusters – Resourceful Communities project. It aims to help people get involved in reducing waste in Wanaka and surrounding areas.
People in Wanaka, Queenstown, Alexandra and Cromwell have fun events coming their way such as repair cafes and zero waste workshops. These demonstrate how to choose reusable products over disposable ones, repair rather than replacing and how to buy only what you need, and how to recycle correctly.
Getting simple things right like cleaning containers before they go in the recycling makes a big difference to reducing the waste that ends up in landfills.
“Like other countries, New Zealand’s economy to date has been based on a ‘take, make and dispose’ model, which treats the resources our planet gives us as ‘free’ and disposable.
“If we adopt a ‘make-use-return’ model, where products are designed to have a long life and can be easily reused, recycled, remanufactured, or composted and returned to nature, then we reduce more waste.
“This project builds on Wanaka Wastebusters’ great work,” concludes Eugenie Sage.
Learnings and successes from this project will be shared so that other communities can also achieve less waste.
For more information on the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund go here.
