Innovative Waste Kaikoura

Innovative waste reduction at Kaikoura

Since its inception in 2000, Innovative Waste Kaikoura has had substantial support from the Zero Waste NZ Trust.

Five years ago, John Ransley was employed as manager of the then Kaikoura Wastebusters Trust.  In the first year, he was instrumental in forming Innovative Waste, a joint venture between the Trust and the Kaikoura Enhancement Trust, an offshoot of the Kaikoura District Council.

John joined the Trust with a background as a mechanical engineer and then 27 years working as a cray fisherman in Kaikoura.  He retired from crayfishing back in 1999, but "only lasted a couple of days" in retirement.

His achievements at Innovative Waste are many and were recognised earlier this year when he won the 'Zero Waste Co-ordinator of the Year' award.  (April 2005)    

The formation of Innovative Waste as a joint venture partnership with the council enabled control to remain in the hands of a community Trust and guaranteed it the job of minimising the town's waste.

"When he started work at the Trust, he had three Task Force Green workers and virtually no equipment – just a shovel, a spade and a wheelbarrow.

"We had a loose agreement to recycle some of the town's waste as it came past, but we have turned that into a sustainable company doing half a million dollars a year business, that employs 10 people with no employment subsidies."

 "We've become a recognized service provider with an agreement with the Council to manage all of the waste stream," says John.

Innovative Waste now do all the recycling with a kerbside pickup for the whole district, run a resource recovery centre, operate a landfill, and manage the whole waste stream with nothing trucked out of Kaikoura to another centre.

IWK was well named as John has come up with a string of innovative ideas to deal with Kaikoura's waste. 

One of the first tasks was to build an amenities block for the staff and this was done themselves using recycled materials.  They re-sited an old engineering shed and added a new roof.  A composting toilet was a feature of this new block and this was funded with a $3000 grant from Zero Waste via the KDC.

Another major task  was to build a horizontal composting unit to deal with the town's organic waste that makes up half of the waste stream.

"The design for the HCU was born of necessity really," he says.  "We had looked at getting a vertical composting unit, but it cost $300,000 and we had a budget of $30,000."

"We decided to build one ourselves, and to put it on its side.  We built a wooden prototype which was later replaced with a concrete unit."

The HCU takes a mixture of putrescible organic waste and green waste and over the period of a month or so of turning, transforms it into a rich compost. The ZWNZ Trust contributed $10,000 towards the HCU.

"We've worked on the design for the last five years, and are almost at the stage where we can take all of the town's putrescibles and compost them," he says.  This is particularly important in a town where 1.4 million tourists a year have to be catered for in the restaurants and cafes.  This produces a lot of organic material.

Another innovation at IWK is the use of a refuse compactor to reduce the space taken up by rubbish in the landfill.  Council engineers had estimated that the landfill would last only three years, so John devised a way of extending the life of the landfill.

"We decided we needed better compaction, so we designed a rubbish baler that works like a giant wool-press.  We cut cells in the landfill and place the bales there, which extended the life of the landfill by six years."

In 2002 IWK won national recognition for its work by winning the Green Ribbon Award in the caring for the urban environment section.  This was for the progress IWK had made in reducing Kaikoura's landfill waste and its recycling and employment initiatives.  In just two years the team had a recycling rate of 51 per cent, and was also operating glass crushing, metal recovery, and green waste composting.

At the awards, presented by Environment Minister Marion Hobbs, Mr Ransley said the win had been made possible not just by the IWK team and directors, but also a supportive community and district council.

The list of innovations continued with the establishment of a Zero Waste Academy in Kaikoura and the  first practical resource recovery centre manager's course. The building of a Zero Waste Academy classroom was supported with $25,000 from the Zero Waste NZ Trust in August 2002.

This was in response to the need for Zero Waste education courses, identified during a social entrepreneurs trip that John did around the country, talking to people involved in council and community waste projects.  This trip sponsored by Zero Waste ($4320) also aimed to gather information for developing national diversion measuring standards

The Academy courses introduced many community groups to the skills they needed to run a business, but in recent years IWK decided to put the course on hold and concentrate on its core business.

In May 2004, the ZWNZT contributed $5000 towards building a steel mould for a concrete version of the HCU structure.

 The latest developments at IWK includes a major $211,000 upgrade that took three months to complete last year. (Funded from a loan grant).  The upgrade included a new hydraulic compacting baler for cardboard and plastic that has increased their capacity from one to six tonnes per day.

The recycling shed was also extended about 75 per cent with a new conveyor table for sorting plastics, and IWK bought a new weighbridge so they could change from a volume to a weight based charging system.  A tractor equipped with a front end loader was also added to enable staff to move the recycling skips more efficiently.

"I'm quite happy with where we are now, as by volume we have a diversion rate of between 65 and 70 percent – almost two thirds of the way to zero waste," says John. 

"We really measure success by how much we landfill, and for a community of just over 4000 people with 1.4 million visitors each year, we have done well to only landfill 1150 tonnes.

"Based on our population we are doing very well compared to the national average," he says.  "Next year our target is 900 tonnes."

John Ransley retires at the end of August 2005 and is pleased Ian Challenger takes over his job.

He says Ian will bring a different set of skills to IWK, stamp his own style on the operation, and keep it moving ahead.    John will keep in touch with progress at IWK as he remains on the Wastebusters Trust Board.