Environment – Making Matariki Zero Waste

For the fifth year in a row, Matariki has been celebrated at Ōrewa Beach, hosted by the Ōrewa Surf Life Saving Club and Te Herenga Waka o Ōrewa Community Marae, where I serve as a committee member. If you’ve attended before, you’ll know that the morning festivities always finish with a shared kai. Te Herenga Waka puts on a sausage sizzle and hot drinks, and Salt Trust provides yummy hot soups. 

My role on the committee is co-holding the environment portfolio alongside Kereama Nathan, with event waste management being my responsibility and having zero-waste events as the ultimate goal. So this year I wanted to give something new a go. The food is usually served with commercially compostable single-use cups and cutlery, which I always make sure end up in one of the compostable collection bins provided by Hibiscus Coast Zero Waste.

However this year I teamed up with Trash Free Taiaotea as well to try something new. With generous funding and some amazing volunteers, we set up a wash station so that food could be served with real cups and real cutlery and would be washed and sterilised, just like at home and ready for the next person to use. I scoured the second-hand shops on Karepiro Drive and purchased all of their $1 and $2 mugs; thank you SPCA Op Shop, Harbour Hospice and Habitat for Humanity if you are reading this! So not only did we reduce waste, but we also bought nothing new and contributed to some amazing causes as well. 

The 110 cups and spoons were washed and reused, and by my calculations, saved at least 250 disposable cups and 250 disposable spoons from being used. In turn, saving all the resources it takes to make them, and all the transport and processing it would take to send them to a commercial compost facility after being used once. 

Saving 500 bits of food packaging from our waste streams is no small feat, and it served as a great trial run for larger events in the future too. A bit of planning, support and some amazing volunteers meant that we could trial a ‘Coast first’ experiment, and although it is a more labour intensive, it just makes more sense. It’s kinder on the earth, donated back to local causes, will save us buying disposables long term, and I reckon some of the best conversations are over a sink of dishes. 

Mānawatia a Matariki, and I hope to see you at the next one.