Mangere Bridge Festival diverts over 90% of its waste from landfill

by Justine Skilling

Friends of the Farm had the pleasure of passing on our WasteWise mantel to younger members of our community at the annual Mangere Bridge Food and Wine festival held in April 2015. With the efficient oversight of Meredith Fountain (Friends of the Farm) and the supportive leadership of Kate Adams (Mangere Bridge Village Progressive Business Association), the boys from Onehunga Mangere Football Club did a sterling job manning the three bin stations for the duration of the event, helping people to sort their rubbish into recyclables, compostables and landfill.

“What an incredible and diligent crew they were and a pleasure to work with” says Meredith. “I hope there will be many more opportunities to work together.  The boys showed themselves to be excellent ambassadors for zero waste. We couldn’t have done this without them and are enormously grateful for their help.  They were all so willing to learn and to put our WasteWise commitment into action in a friendly and approachable way”.

With our combined forces, we managed to beat last year’s very high target, achieving a 91.8% diversion of waste from landfill! Producing only 11kg of waste at an event involving over 1500 people is a remarkable achievement.

Thanks to all the vendors who chose compostable packaging over styrofoam, which greatly reduced the volume of waste produced at the event.  Thanks also to Steve Rickerby of We Compost, who organised the bins at short notice and disposed of all three streams of waste. Special mention also goes to the St Peters students who helped to set up the bin stations before the festival. 

Festival-goers also demonstrated their commitment by sorting their rubbish into the correct bin.  As a result very little litter was left on the ground. It was fantastic to see a wonderfully diverse crowd showing their willingness to embrace our zero waste goals for community events in Mangere Bridge.