Doing your bit to separate food scraps from your landfill waste reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps us make delicious compost for our soil.
From 1 February, empty aerosol cans, tea bags and kitchen paper towels go in the landfill bin. Thank you for keeping these items out of our food scraps and recycling bins!
Your food scraps bin is collected every week on your collection day. Check out our bin collection schedule if you're not sure of your day.
Make sure you position it where our drivers will see it, about 30cms from your wheelie bins. Please keep the weight of the contents below 10kg.
You can line your food scraps bin with newspaper or cabbage leaves to help keep it clean.
Using your food scraps bin is an easy way to help the environment.
Feed me | Don't feed me |
---|---|
Vegetable scraps, including peelings, stalks and skins |
Any plastic bags and liners, including compostable bags |
Fruit scraps, including peelings, cores, stalks and skins |
Compostable coffee cups |
Meat leftovers, bones and scraps, including fat trimmings |
Compostable containers |
Fish scraps and bones, and shellfish shells |
Compostable packaging |
Bread |
Green waste |
Pasta, rice and leftover cooked food |
Tissues and paper towels, for hygiene reasons |
Dairy products |
Tea bags |
Egg and egg shells |
|
Coffee grounds and loose tea leaves |
|
Indoor cut flowers |
|
Newspaper (for wrapping scraps or lining your bin) |
Keep a small container, like an ice cream tub, bowl or pedal bin on your kitchen bench to collect scraps during the day. Then just do one trip to the bin when the container is full.
To avoid items sticking to your bin when it is emptied, we recommend lining the bottom of your bin with large vegetable leaves, dead indoor flowers or newspaper. You can also wrap sticky, wet or smelly items in newspaper to stop them sticking to your bin.
If you’d prefer to keep your food scraps bin outside, you can use a smaller container to collect scraps in in your kitchen, such as an ice cream container, a small pedal bin, or a bowl with a plate over it. Once this is full you can then empty this into your food scraps bin. Some people also place their scraps in the fridge or freezer until the morning of their collection and then place them into the bin, to avoid smells.
Place the handle of your food scraps bin in the upright position at the kerb to keep it locked in place. This stops items from falling out, as well as reducing smells and pests.
Each of your bins is picked up by a different truck. To help drivers see your smaller food scraps bin, please place it on the side of bigger wheelie bins that will be seen when the driver is approaching your property and at least 30cm away from wheelie bins. Do not place the food scraps bin on top of, behind or between other bins. Once it’s been emptied, on windy days your bin may be placed on its side at the kerb.
We recommend keeping any smelly foods such as meat in the fridge or freezer until collection day. You can also wrap your food scraps in newspaper to help keep in any smells. Cleaning your bin regularly with detergent and a brush will also help reduce any smells.
These are taken to a commercial composting facility in Hampton Downs where they get turned into compost for gardens, putting nutrients back into the soil.
There is no agreed New Zealand standard for compostable packaging, and no national requirements for labelling and meeting commercially compostable international standards. This means it’s very hard to tell the difference between plastic non-compostable liners and plant-based plastic liners.
Instead, use newspaper, large vegetable leaves or cut flower stems to line your bin.
If you compost at home, keep it up! Composting is a great way to process green waste and compostable items that can’t be included in your food scraps bin, such as tissues, home compostable packaging, hair, cold ash, dust and fallen leaves.
Note that items placed down a sink disposal unit go to the landfill, so it’s best to compost at home or to use your food scraps bin.
To learn more about how to set up a compost, worm farm or Bokashi bin, check out our information about composting or take a workshop. We fund free composting workshops each year through Let's Compost, with $40 off your selected composting system.
Bins that are on your property are your responsibility to care for, so if they are damaged, stolen or misused while on your property we will not replace them. You can arrange delivery of a replacement bin (costs apply).
Bins that are damaged or stolen on collection day while they are on the kerb for collection or after they have been emptied will be replaced by NPDC provided they have not been put out days early or left out days later.
We will replace bins and or parts (such as wheels and lids) due to normal wear and tear.
Please phone us on 06 759 6060 or email us if you need to arrange for a bin repair or a replacement bin.
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