Waste Minimisation Courses

Waste Minimisation at UNITEC  (Institute of Technology, Auckland)

The Waste Minimisation course at UNITEC can be taken on its own as a Certificate of Proficiency, as part of the one-year Diploma of Environmental Technology, the three-year Bachelor of Resource Management or the four-year Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental).

The course covers:
Cleaner production systems, life cycle analysis, waste auditing, quality and environmental management systems as well as integrating the Maori cultural aspects relating to waste management and the environment.

One of the features of the course is that students get “hands on” experience in working with organisations in helping them to reduce their waste production.

More information can be found at http://www.unitec.ac.nz/ by clicking on the Faculty of Architecture and Design and the follow on down to the Engineering School and Environmental Engineering.

The Faculty of Architecture and Design at Victoria University, Wellington

offers a number of papers as a part of the Architecture degree including topics such as sustainable construction, deconstruction, low energy and healthy buildings.

‘Making Material Out of Waste’ – May 2003
Students of the Sustainable Architecture course have been working on solutions to the construction and demolition waste problem in New Zealand.

Key ‘problem’ wastes were identified including plasterboard, rubber tyres, specific plastics and timber off-cuts. Students were then challenged to create new and innovative building materials from this waste.

A wide variety of ideas were explored and several prototypes are considered to be worthy of further development.

Products include:

• Gibrix - a building block constructed from plasterboard off-cuts intended for use in internal walls. Manufacturing processes would be simple and the resulting blocks have high thermal mass and have some acoustic insulation properties also.

This faculty has also been preparing a national report on deconstruction in New Zealand.

Contact John Storey ( ) or Maibritt Pedersen ( ) for further information.

Auckland University of Technology

As part of the Bachelor of Applied Science, AUT offer a Level 7 (third year) paper in Natural Resource Management.

For more information go to www.aut.ac.nz, Faculty of Science & Engineering, Bachelor of Applied Science.

Massey University

For more information on the whole range of learning on offer at Massey University please visit http://www.massey.ac.nz and http://www.engine.ac.nz