There was always a chance Dunedin’s new bins would be put to novel purposes.
Both the green-lidded bin, designed for food and garden waste, and its six-litre counter-top kitchen caddy sidekick.
So it has proved.
A call over social media for people to share the uses they have found for the bins, revealed just how versatile the containers can be.
Sure enough, some of the counter-top kitchen containers are now clothes-peg baskets, while others are receptacles for everything from children’s toys to sheep medication.
Taking a yet to be named prize for employing the big green bin in a way council staff might never have imaged, was the homeowner who loaded it up with an entire deer carcass.
Blair Kippenberger, the owner of bin cleaning service Bin Blast, was the person unlucky enough to stumble upon it first.
He was out cleaning bins but accidentally got ahead of the collections.
"It was fly blown, maggot city. But the homeowner was a real good sort, he leaned over the fence and says ‘Ah, mate, sorry!’."
Kippenberger was unfazed.
"Well, they are a prime example of using the rules to your advantage. I think it’s brilliant. It’s diverting all of this waste from landfill, that has no real reason to be going there."
Many others chipped in to the conversation with more conventional uses, including food waste, lawn clippings, difficult organics such as noxious weeds and prickly rose trimmings. Several said the bins were a great motivation to get out in the garden, while others saw the bins as a good excuse to get on board with composting food scraps.
On the other hand, some thought the bins had become the too hard basket, issues with flies or missed collections outweighing the benefits.
However, a bigger picture view of the service might note that the benefits of the organic waste bins quite literally extend sky high.
University of Otago geography senior lecturer Dr Sean Connelly explains that organic waste can create methane emissions.
When organic material decomposes in landfill, it becomes anaerobic, decomposing without oxygen present. This leads to the formation of methane gas, Dr Connelly says.
So by creating that anaerobic environment, the [methane] gas builds up, and eventually it gets released. The Ministry for the Environment reports that 9% of New Zealand’s biogenic methane emissions and 4% of our total greenhouse gas emissions are from food and organic waste.
Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, and although it isn’t as long-lasting or abundant as carbon dioxide, it still has a significant global warming effect.
It all leaves Aotearoa’s clean and green reputation looking a thin and tattered veil.
And yet, the DCC know that doing something is undoubtedly better than nothing, even if options are slim. Targeting organic waste is a necessary step, especially considering a 2023 report found that New Zealand households throw out $3.1 billion of avoidable food waste each year.
DCC waste and environment solutions group manager Chris Henderson says the council’s primary goal in introducing the green bins is reducing methane emissions from landfill.
"The primary emitter being organic matter in landfill," he says. "So, the more organic matter we can get out, the better."
And the scheme started well. In the first week alone, the collections’ team picked up and diverted 124.6 tonnes of waste from the green-lidded bins.
DCC waste minimisation supervisor Catherine Gledhill says once the new Green Island composting facility is complete, they will be able to divert waste from commercial sectors, such as restaurants and food preparation companies. That will put the council on track to divert 95% of food and organic waste from landfill within the next few years.
However, that’s only part of the story.
"Everyone’s hiding the bigger picture, right?" Dr Connelly says.
"I think there’s a real danger that our approach to dealing with organic waste by councils falls into the same trap that we fell into with recycling in general.
"We can think of recycling as the most successful failure to deal with waste. We are all very accustomed to collecting our different forms of recyclables, putting them in different bins and then wiping our hands of it, patting ourselves on the back, and thinking of ourselves as doing good environmental deeds. But it’s not actually changing our behaviour in terms of the amount of recyclable material that were using, were not reducing our consumption."
His argument extends far beyond the household-waste issue.
"It is important to remember that the vast majority of food waste doesn’t occur in the home. It occurs elsewhere in the food system."
Most of the food grown for human consumption will never make it to processors or retailers, he says. If it’s the wrong shape, blemished, or logistical issues arise, food will be discarded before it has even left the farm.
So, the green-lidded bins? Dr Connelly says we should have had them years ago.
"The question isn’t ‘should we be collecting green waste at the curb side?’. Yes, absolutely, we should. But that’s not the solution. That’s one small part of the solution.
"We have to actually think about why and how is that waste ending up there in the first instance, and also, what is all the other waste that’s sitting behind that?"
The Dunedin City Council wants to drive this message home, too. The organic waste kitchen caddies — the same ones that some people are using as peg baskets and receptacles for children’s toys — were intentionally provided to allow people to see how much food is thrown away in their household. This awareness and acknowledgement is a key step, Gledhill explains, in understanding that reducing waste in the first place is key.
"So, use the green waste collection," Dr Connelly says. "But don’t let our attention on organic waste stop there. Think about all the other things that are being missed. The green waste kerbside collection should be just the start of a conversation around food waste and organic waste and how we manage it, rather than the end of the conversation."
Seren Stevens is a University of Otago humanities intern with The Weekend Mix.
