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A group of Evelyn Page retirement village residents recently got to see first-hand where their food scraps end up when they visited a Waitoki farm that has been converted into a banana plantation.
Five years ago, the Ōrewa village signed up to the City to Farm project, which collects food scraps from local organisations and businesses. The food scraps, which would otherwise go into landfill, are fermented, then composted on the farm. This nourishes the banana crop.
The amount of scraps collected from the village will soon tip over the 100 tonne mark.
According to Sustainable North Trust’s Betsy Kettle, this equates to 190 tonnes of greenhouse gases diverted from the environment.
Residents Graeme Howard, Sue Hoy and Sylvia Glenister were excited to visit farmer Phil Grainger’s plantation to find out more about the process.
It was Graeme who first spotted an article about the pilot scheme in Hibiscus Matters in 2019 and suggested joining to the village’s management team.
“Village manager Jill Clark immediately saw the benefits of diverting food scraps from the kitchen from going into landfill, and agreed that our village could participate,” Graeme says.
“I see the 45 litre food scrap bins being taken away from the village regularly but never realised how much tonnage was being composted from just the Hibiscus Coast. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.”
Betsy said the City to Farm scheme epitomises a true circular economy, with the delivery of 5kg of bananas to a local kindergarten each week currently being trialled.
