Organic rubbish can be dealt with at home easily at low cost and it doesn’t matter if you have a garden or not. Just pick the option that best suits you.
Every day all over New Zealand, families throw out food that could have been eaten. Bread that has gone stale, bananas that have gone black, and mince that we didn’t cook by the use by date all end up in the rubbish. A good part of the family grocery bill simply gets thrown away.
Apartment-dwellers need not miss out on the pleasures of gardening – plenty of plants thrive in pots and garden bags, set up in small areas.
Mulch keeps your garden looking tidy, reduces the need to water, suppresses weeds and it makes use of material that might otherwise be dumped in a landfill.
If you are lucky enough to have fruit trees or a vegetable garden, or access to cheap produce when it is in season, you might want to try keeping it longer by preserving it.
There are a whole host of reasons for why you might want to think about freezing food at home.
Blanching means boiling or steaming vegetables briefly, and then cooling them rapidly.
Freezing food you don’t want to eat right away is a great way to stop food going into the bin, and save you money.
A rubbish audit is a good way of showing you what you’re throwing out and helps you identify how to reduce your rubbish.
Composting is a natural process that breaks down organic material like leaves, grass clippings, food scraps and paper into a nutrient rich soil like material, which is great for the garden!
Worm farms break down your organic rubbish into nutrient-rich compost and ‘worm juice’ that can then be used in your garden.
Reusing products is a great way of minimising your rubbish. It saves the energy and resources needed to make new products and can save you money.
Effective Micro-organism (EM) composting is a bucket system that uses micro-organisms to break down food scraps into a compost and liquid fertilizer, which you can then use in your garden.
In some areas you can compost green garden rubbish at transfer station.
The best option for getting rid of your food waste depends on the options available to you locally. There are arguments for and against the use of sink waste disposal units (sometimes referred to by the common brand name "InSinkErator").
