Opotiki District Council

Location: Eastern Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand
Population : 9,600

Situated on the coast of the beautiful Bay of Plenty, the Opotiki District has extremes of rich fertile coastal margin to very steep natural bush clad hinterland.

Horticulture, mainly kiwifruit and avocados, together with a strong dairy industry, provides the major income for the district.

The coastline provides kilometres of safe swimming, fishing, boating, biking, loafing and walking. There are numerous rivers for fishing, rafting, jet boating or sailing.

Refuse in the district is mainly domestic in nature.

There is only one landfill sited in Opotiki but with only one and a half years of capacity left.

In November 1998 the Opotiki District Council was the first local authority in New Zealand to adopt a Zero Waste strategy.

From a peak waste volume of 10,000 tonnes at that time, waste reduction measures and recycling initiatives reduced this to approximately 5,500 tonnes by June 2000.

A kerbside recycling scheme instituted in July 2000 for the urban Opotiki area together with three planned Resource Recovery Facilities has seen a reduction to 1,500 tonnes per annum by June 2002.
That is an 85% reduction in thirty six months. (See photo)

Education has been undertaken on two fronts:

• Targeting the general public via individual household information booklets and advertising in the local paper.
• Secondly by initiating worm farms with waste reduction and recycling education in every school in Opotiki. Fourteen schools out of a total of fifteen have an operating worm farm. All schools should be organic waste disposal self-sufficient by December 2002.

Seven new jobs have been created with more part time work to be started.

Businesses have been targeted to reduce waste, with a local supermarket now diverting over 3,500 m3 of residual waste from the landfill i.e. a reduction of over 16% of waste for the district.

For more information contact Dave Reece at daver@odc.govt.nz  or call 07 315 6167.