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An early childhood facility in Red Beach recently took a giant step forward in reducing the amount of waste that it sends to landfill.
The Nurture Early Learning Centre joined the Eco ECE programme in February, 2021. This brings trained facilitators to the centre to provide advice and a plan to reduce waste.
Eco ECE programme facilitator, Samantha Imhof, says one of the most common waste streams is food scraps.
“Nurture is one of the larger centres on the Hibiscus Coast and food is prepared and cooked on site,” she says. “These types of centres have more food scraps than those where parents provide lunchboxes.”
Samantha says an easy solution for Nurture, therefore, was to jump on board with the City to Farm initiative where food scraps are put into a bokashi bin system, collected weekly and taken to a farm in Waitoki to be composted and used to grow bananas.
Since Nurture started working with City to Farm, it has diverted a massive one tonne of food scraps from landfill.
To mark this milestone, the centre was given a plaque at the Waitoki farm. It is the first plaque to go to a Coast early learning centre.
Samantha and City to Farm facilitator Stephanie Muller Pallares also presented the children and teachers with a certificate.
“The children showed us some wonderful pictures they had drawn about their ideas around how much one tonne looked like,” Samantha says.
