Our community has been diverting food waste from landfill since 2017 thanks to the forward-thinking of the innovative team at Xtreme Zero Waste.
(Listen to the full interview below:) Up until now, this service has been funded through the council as well as through fundraising efforts from XZW and generous donations from the community. For the food waste collection service to continue beyond July 2022 an annual targeted rate is required to cover operational costs of the service.
“We are so fortunate to have had a trial period here in Whaingaroa and to have the costs covered over the past 5 years. We are the only community in the district that has this service,” said Whāingaroa Ward Councilor Lisa Thomson, also highlighting the great recycling and resource recovery work that XZW does.
The proposed targeted rate would be $72.90 per household which equates to $1.40 per week and would enable every household in Raglan to have access to this service. This includes a weekly collection of food scraps from the kerbside and includes the caddy liners for the indoor kitchen caddy.
Lisa says that a district-wide food waste collection service will be coming into effect over the next 3-4 years that mirrors what Whāingaroa have been doing since 2017 with a targeted rate potentially being introduced to all communities that have this service – although she couldn’t confirm whether this would be the case as the decision has not been deliberated.
Liz Stanaway from XZW says that typically about 35% of the waste put into the blue bags can be diverted from landfill through the food waste collection service.
“As a community we are pretty good but we still had quite a bit of organic waste going into the blue bags,” said Liz.
Liz notes that there are many individuals in our community that already have home composting and other practices in place and that we can go further to reduce our impact on the environment as a community.
“There is no oxygen in the landfill so the bacteria creates methane gas – which is a strong greenhouse gas,” says Liz.
“There is also leachate created by food waste within the landfill that strips out toxins as it runs down and pools at the bottom, eventually going into the earth because some landfills have no lining and the ones that do have a limited life span.” Instead of poisoning the soil, the food waste service run by XZW also turns the waste into a nutritious resource for your soil in the form of compost using their large hot composting unit.
Along with the wider benefits for the environment Liz says that there are also economic benefits to the ratepayer in that there will be less waste going into the blue bags.
She expects that the cost of the blue bags will rise over the next two years as increased landfill levies come into effect to reflect the true cost of rubbish disposal. The more waste we can divert from these blue bags and ultimately from landfill, the less it costs the community both economically and environmentally.
While the current cost of these landfill levies is around $20 per tonne, this figure is expected to triple to $60 per tonne by 2024 with these costs reflected in the cost of the blue bags.
Liz also mentions that because we are a diverse community, with high numbers of visitors as well, it’s important to have everyone onboard for the food waste service to be effective in diverting waste from landfill at a community level.
She acknowledges the work being done by accommodation providers in educating their visitors around the community’s waste disposal values – including the food waste collection service as every single action adds up.
The current targeted rate consultation covers a holding period for Raglan while it becomes a compulsory service district-wide and Liz is concerned that if the service is put on hold for a year only to return again, this could have impacts on the hard work that has been done over the past five years to change the waste disposal behavior of the community.
“There is a lot of work that goes into setting up the service and the comms around behavior change and it could take another year or two of hard work to get back to where we are now ” says Liz.
“Organic resources should not be going into landfill where it causes problems and there are also additional costs like transport that are associated with landfill.” The target rate proposed by council is aimed at covering the service to the XZW gate and XZW covers the cost of processing the waste.
The Raglan Food Waste Consultation closes 5pm, Friday 1 April. Visit the Waikato District Council website for more information: https://shape.waikatodistrict.govt.nz/raglan-food-waste-2022 https://raglanradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/XZW_food_waste_raglan.png