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Posts Tagged ‘WasteMinz’
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 by Admin
 Pelletised recycling plastics from Mastagard It has taken a bit of time to get around to organising the photos I took from the WasteMinz Conference a few weeks ago but they are all now uploaded on the SIFT Flickr site.
Featured organisations include:
SuloTalbot
 Sulo Talbot Bin Man Mastagard
 Mastagard Stand Owens-Illinois
 Owens Illinois stand Villa Maria Winery
 Villa Maria Winery Mangere Ministry for the Environment
 MfE Stand and of course WasteMinz who put on an excellent, highly informative and productive conference. Next year it will be in Rotorua and if this year is anything to go by will be just as important to those in or associated with the waste and recovering materials industries.
Tags: conference, Flickr, Mastagard, mfe, Owens-Illinois, photos, SIFT, SuloTalbot, Villa Maria, WasteMinz, wines
Posted in Events, SIFT, Waste Management | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 by Admin
 Kate Valley Landfill, North Canterbury One of the big issues or themes during the WasteMinz conference was how councils and other Territorial Authorities are to use their share of the waste disposal levies collected by the Ministry for the Environment. The levies collected have been put into a new fund called the Waste Minimisation Fund. Half of the funds collected go to councils “on a per head of population basis” to help them with their waste mangement and minimisation plans (WMMP) and the other half to individuals, businesses and other organisations that have projects that meet the WMF criteria (some of the fund will also pay administration costs).
To date councils across New Zealand have received approx $3 million each quarter this year (with another about to paid). That’s a total of approx $12 million that, states Director of Operations for the Ministry for the Environment Martyn Pinkard, is to be used for solutions that are innovative, wide reaching within the community and have a direct impact on reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill.
To July 2010 the district councils in Canterbury have received a total of $1.2 million with Christchurch City Council taking the largest share due to the largest population being in their jurisdiction ($815,000).
The Sustainable Initiatives Fund Trust can play a key role in helping local Canterbury territorial authorities to come up with and implement solutions that are both attractive and appropriate to the Ministry for the Environment and it’s aims in Waste Minimisation. Collaboration and industry and council integration will be vital in the success of projects that are to reduce waste to landfill and recover and use our resources more efficiently. Local solutions tailored to each community that have a long term effect will also be important.
Calling all Canterbury Territorial Authorities
Any district council in Canterbury that has a project or idea for a project that they could collaborate or co-fund with SIFT on can give us a call to discuss the possible solutions. If the project meets our criteria and the SIFT board give it the go ahead then our links, networks, ideas and possible funding could help to bring the project to fruition. Collaboration within the waste and sustainability fields are key to developing a sustainable future for Canterbury.
More information on payments to individual territorial authorities.
Downloadable maps of where the waste disposal sites are in New Zealand can be found here.
**Image by SIFT from WasteMinz Conference field trip 2009
Tags: Martyn Pinkard, mfe, reduction, SIFT, Territorial Authorities, waste, Waste Levies, Waste Minimisation fund, WasteMinz
Posted in Business & Sustainability, Waste Management, social lending | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 by Admin
 Waitaki Resource Co-ordinator Maxine Woodhouse Maxine Woodhouse, Waitaki Resource Exchange’s Co-ordinator is our Green Collar Job interviewee this week. We met Maxine at the WasteMinz workshops in April and although Waitaki is just outside of the Canterbury region we still thought what she does everyday would be of interest to our blog readers. Three days a week Maxine works with businesses, not-for-profits and schools looking at waste as a resource with the aim to divert that waste from their local landfill and to show people how to utilise waste as a resource within the community. She has also assisted in the implementation of recycling in local workplaces. Maxine says “Our goal is to create lasting networks between those with excess resources & those seeking them, thus extending the life of usable materials & keeping them out of the landfill”.
When not focussed on waste Maxine is either in her garden or volunteering in other initiatives in the community such as local cycle groups and the Alternative Transport project which is run in conjunction with Sport Waitaki, the Rural PHO (Primary Health Organisation) and the local Transition Town movement. Maxine also writes a fortnightly column in the local Waitaki paper which is read by people from all walks of life in the community.
1. What do you do to live more sustainably (with a low impact) in your life?
There are a number of things: I recycle all my household items, choose wisely when shopping, grow my own Fruit and Veges, I walk to work, ride my bike or car pool to visit business owners and I volunteer for the Transition Town movement to help educate the community on low impact activities to help our environment & promote alternative means of transport for people to get to school, work and around the community.
2. How do you live more sustainably at work?
I work from home. So this means I just have to walk up the back of my house to my office. Sometime I choose to jog or ride my bike. ha-ha
3. What do you think is the biggest environmental issue we need to deal with in Christchurch/New Zealand?
There are a number of environmental issues that I think NZ is going to face in the future & some that are already being shown.
I think we need to be farming smarter (inc Beef, sheep, cows, crops etc) and changing our habits, in order to protect our water ways and soils here in NZ, Genetic Engineering and food labelling.
The amount of people that drive cars.
How we, as consumers, are consuming. We are creating problems that are making our rubbish problems bigger. We need to start taking ownership of our consumer choices, when it comes to quality and the end of line, for our products.
4. What makes you smile?
Interacting with community and seeing people being positive and happy.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve?
People making excuses for their behaviour and not having a consequence for their actions!
6. What is your favorite colour and why?
Ummm, blue at the moment. Representing Water in the world and how precious this is for our survival.
7. Do you have a favorite place in the world? Describe why?
Oamaru of course. It’s centrally located, over looks the ocean, has a great community of supportive people, is the end place for the new cycle way in NZ, great surfing and has big things on the way for the future!
8. What’s your connection to SIFT?
I met the Olivia and Chris [Pickrill, Chairman] at the Waste Minz conference in April and heard all about the great initiatives that they are doing.
9. Do you remember your favorite teacher and why they were your favorite?
Would have to be when I did my Outdoor Education course in Cairns (OZ), my teacher Amanda Smith. She was a great female role model and inspired me to pursuer my career as an Outdoor educator in Victoria, which I did for almost 3 years.
10. What do you want to leave behind?
A world full of people who care and take responsibility for their actions, as human beings and understand that we can’t just keep taking and nothing is going to happen.
11. What do you think the future will bring?
This is the year for change. So hopefully people will make wiser consuming choices, start to recycle better and write more letters to companies to let them know what they think about products and the packaging used.
12. Who is someone you really admire and why?
I don’t have anyone that comes to mind, but in general, people who take risks and give things they may never had done before a good go!
13. What is happening outside your window right now?
It’s really raining. We have flooding and no school today.
14. What is your favorite breakfast?
Organic Clearwater Yoghurt from Peel Forest, with fresh organic strawberries.
15. What is the best piece of advice you can give us?
“Don’t try to convince people to change the way they think. Just focus on how you can work with the positive solutions and the positives examples…” David Holmgren
I love this peace of advice and this is my motto for this year..(It’s working too)
Tags: landfill, Maxine Woodhouse, resource, SIFT, Transition Towns, Waitaki Resource, waste, WasteMinz
Posted in Green Collar Jobs Q&A | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010 by Admin
 Lisa Smith - Minds at Work Last week we attended the WasteMinz Workshops held in Auckland. It was a great turn out and we met lots of new people and caught up with acquaintances from the Waste industry. Here are some of the highlights from the workshops:
Lisa Smith from Minds At Work (based in Melbourne) took the Behaviour Change work stream for the two days. I did the first day and learnt a lot about new ways of thinking, idea generation and just how stuck in the box we can be. Lisa is super energetic and a really great presenter making it fun and informative at the same time. We need to spend time generating ideas in order to be innovative and be able to move forward and we don’t spend enough time generating ideas and just thinking. And it needs to be more fun!
Part of the workshops were about making a plan for zero waste – how were we going to do it. This involved working through her process for idea generation, developing the design of the good ideas, Evaulating those ideas and then putting the best one into action. It really highlighted how we all think and act very differently – some of us are dreamers while others are doers! And we just need practice doing those bits we are not so proficient at. As part of behaviour change we looked at why people don’t change and then at the end of the two days she gave us the top 10 myths of behaviour change. This really was only a taster at sequence thinking and how we can help change people’s behaviour but it was good first look.
Some quotes:
- “Any piece of work must start with the joyous explosion of ideas.”
- “Thinking inside the box constrains our ideas.”
- “Assumptions and convenience limits thinking.”
- “Fear is the biggest constraint…to change.”
- “We tend not to check the boundaries but just assume they are there…bust those assumptions.”
- “If you capture an idea and design it at the same time then that’s all it can be.”
- “If you stop one idea from coming you might stop the twenty after it.”
- “The key is to think about how you need to be thinking.”
On the second day of the workshops I needed to broaden my waste knowledge so did those instead of continuing on with Lisa and the Behaviour Change workshops. Here are some of the highlights:
The Community Recycling Network launched their campaign for Real Recycling – the current sytem of recycling will not get the country to where it needs to be. There is too much contamination and we need to work towards effective, efficient and valuable recycling (”How many materials can you mix together before it becomes “rubbish”?”). We also need to create recycling systems that are “fit for purpose”- a massive MRF may not suit a small, rural town. Sue Coutts from the Community Recycling Network stated that we need collaboration and shared goals, quality feedstock, secure markets, self reliance, on shore processing, transparency, better reporting (there are big data gaps) and the all important (but severly lacking) audit trail (where is our waste going) – we totally agree with all of that. We also need to look at the whole life costs associated with a form of recycling. I think the best quote from Sue was “the education of the system has a greater impact then the nature of the system. People do care and want to be apart of a better world.”
John Webber from the Glass Packaging Forum then discussed their move to develop a Glass Product Stewardship Scheme with the ultimate objective of zero glass waste to landfill. The recovery of glass is 69% nationwide currently.
Judi Burgess from TransPacific Industries (TPI) then presented the process from start to finish of developing and implementing the 3 Bin system now being used in Christchurch City. This was very interesting. It took about 2 years and there are 468,000 bins and 50 trucks – a lot of logistics to organise. They found that they had issues with delivery the bins the first time (getting stuck with the annual A&P Show timings), issues around whether to give a small bin option, the size and shape of the labels, truck branding and signage and staffing. Completing a full stakeholder analysis enabled them to understand who the customer was and who needed to help make it happen.
Spring Humphries from Fonterra did a presentation on the recycling they set up at their various sites. They went from producing 18,000 tonnes of rubbish to 5000 tonnes of rubbish and have (since 2003/2004) recovered 28,000 tonnes of cardboard.
CEO of WasteMinz Marion Short gave an inforamative presentation on how to build good long term relationships – align with the other party’s values and strategy, be collaborative, be solutions outcome focussed and remember to keep your stakeholders informed.
Sue Coutt’s put on her other hat as Wanaka Waste Busters and talked to us about what we can do to fundamentally make a difference. Some (very relevant) quotes from her include:
- “Make a shift from organising the problems to fundamentally healing them.”
- “Run businesses as if people and the planet mattered.”
- “Viability is not just about cash flow but the capacity to deliver.”
- “Every decision should take into account sustainability.”
- “We need to train the children of today to be able to live in their world.”
If last week’s WasteMinz Workshops are anything to go by then the big conference in October is going to be great fun, productive and highly informative. Thanks to the team at WasteMinz for putting together the workshops. It is a valuable way to meet new people from the industry and stay informed with what is going on.
Tags: Community Recycling Network, Glass Packaging Forum, landfill, Lisa Smith, Minds at Work, TPI, Wanaka Waste Busters, waste, WasteMinz
Posted in Events, News on Sustainability, Sustainability Resources, Waste Management | No Comments »
Friday, April 30th, 2010 by Admin
 Baled Paper - Copyright - SIFT What a whirlwind week! We were at the WasteMinz conference earlier in the week and then spent yesterday in catch up mode. So, for today we have few cool things we have found that might be of interest and then next week there will be a bit of a run down on the conference and what we learned.
The most important thing learnt during the two days (it was a mix of Behaviour Change workshops and workshops on waste related issues) is that we need to act sustainably everyday – small actions will add up to make a big impact.
Here are the Friday Favourites:
- The toilet paper issue – how far will you go to reduce your paper waste – all the way to cloths?
- How about eating paper with no calories? As long as it is recycled!
- The biodegradable pen – love it!
- A new guide to buying sustainable paper for your office here launched recently by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Government.
- A better recycling campaign was also launched this week by the Community Recycling Network (Sue Coutts presented a very informative presentation at the WasteMinz workshop about the launch and why we need to implement more effective and efficient recycling systems with less contamination and to increase onshore recycling). You read see more of what they do here.
- And finally, Envirocomp who compost nappies are still on a roll composting 15,000 nappies a day and looking to expand - more here.
Tags: behaviour change, Friday favourites, paper, recycling, Waste Management, WasteMinz
Posted in Friday favourites, Waste Management | No Comments »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010 by Admin
 Bales of cans for recycling - Photo copyright SIFT. Happy Friday. The sun is shining on a really warm Autumn day and we are busy organising new projects and checking up on how current projects are progressing. Next Tuesday and Wednesday we will be attending the WasteMinz Workshops in Auckland so we will be a little quiet on the blog front for a few days but will return with lots of stories, photos and WasteMinz goodness.
In the meantime here are a few waste related goodies to make your Friday.
Have a great weekend.
Tags: CFL, Christchurch City Council, Earth Day, Friday favourites, links, recycling, WasteMinz
Posted in Friday favourites | No Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010 by Admin
 WasteMinz CEO Marion Short Marion Short is the CEO of the Waste Management Institute of New Zealand (WasteMinz). WasteMinz are an incorporated not-for-profit organisation that seeks to bring all the different interest groups together to “enable the achievement of an environmentally and economically sustainable waste minimisation strategy for New Zealand.” You can read more about what they do here. Below are Marion’s answers to our Green Collar Job questions.
1. What do you do to live more sustainably (with a low impact) in your life?
We do all the usual good things at home and also try to buy well – a sort of smart shopping philosophy: buy quality (and environmentally friendly products) so that they last longer and also items that have less packaging.
2. How do you live more sustainably at work?
At WasteMINZ we live and breathe our environmental policy in everything we do. Plus I also try to work from home during peak travel times so I can be both more effective and minimise the time I spend driving my car and adding to Auckland’s traffic congestion. The time saving for me is slightly over an hour a day (unbelievable)!
3. What do you think is the biggest environmental issue we need to deal with in Christchurch/New Zealand?
I still believe there is a lack of understanding and action in regards to living in a more environmentally manner. This requires a significant attitude shift by individuals, communities and industry. We need to encourage people to make that change now and preserve our beautiful country and the value of New Zealand as a brand.
4. What makes you smile?
I smile and laugh alot – I guess I enjoy the little things and am an optimist by nature. I love taking my dog for a walk – he is always so thrilled. I love sitting down to a big family dinner – my husband is one of six boys and family is really important to us. I love the huge hugs from my boys who are both over 6 foot tall. And I love results – when you look around and you say – wow that is done – great job!
5. What is your biggest pet peeve?
People throwing rubbish out of their cars, or just leaving it behind – what is up with that!
6. What is your favourite colour and why?
I love orange – I think because it is so bright and happy – you can’t feel miserable wearing orange.
7. Do you have a favourite place in the world? Describe why?
My favourite place is with my family and closest friends, enjoying their company, great New Zealand food and a glass of fantastic New Zealand wine (either a chardonnay or a pinot noir). Hopefully it is a sunny day (I live in Auckland – so that doesn’t always happen) and we have a nice shady spot to sit and tell each other all our news.
8. What’s your connection to the Sustainable Initiatives Fund Trust?
Sift are members of WasteMINZ and we share linkages in a network focused on great good outcomes!
9. Do you remember your favourite teacher and why they were your favourite?
My favourite and first teacher was my Dad and to this day he remains my favourite teacher. Growing up we had a saying ‘it can’t be that hard’ which was always said as we plunged into difficult and exciting projects and journeys. I think I was only 8 years old when Dad let me paint the VW combi van that he restored – so I always felt he had so much faith in my abilities to give something a go and not completely bugger it up. I hope I am teaching my children that lesson.
10. What do you want to leave behind?
I want to leave happy memories, I want to have made a difference in people’s lives and I want my children to grow up happy, healthy and strong contributors to a positive and more improved society/world.
11. What do you think the future will bring?
I believe that collaborative operating models are the way of the future. That in order to achieve the best results it requires multiple stakeholders working together on greater good (or at least common good) outcomes.
That in the future. closer attention and value will be placed on the importance of relationships, and that we will move away from having a short term focus to being focused on longer term sustainable strategic outcomes.
I want to have faith and believe that we will get it together and make the changes necessary for a sustainable world.
I want to believe that people will recognise that being environmentally sustainable is the only way, not just a green choice.
12. Who is someone you really admire and why?
I admire many people for many different reasons. It is possible to admire someone for what they have achieved but not necessarily for who they are.
The group of people that I admire the most are the ones that make an effort to ‘pay it forward’. These people give something of themselves without expecting anything in return, in order to make a positive difference in the lives of the people around them.
A challenge – what can you do to ‘pay it forward’?
13. What is happening outside your window right now?
Sunny Auckland day – and I feel like everything is right in the world – but of course I haven’t hit the traffic yet!
14. What is your favourite breakfast?
Coffee
15. What is the best piece of advice you can give us?
Sit down and think about who are your stakeholders – then think of them in terms of high and low interest and high and low power.
Those that have both high interest and high power are really important to what you are trying to achieve. Likewise those with low interest but high power need to be actively managed and kept informed, otherwise they could be potential roadblocks.
Are you communicating with your stakeholders? How often and how? Are there other communication tools that you could use, or leverage off your stakeholders communications tools (remember we are all part of a big network – you just need to use it).
Are the relationships working? Could they work better?
Do you have a communications strategy?
Do you know what your key messages are and your key points of differentiation?
People are so often scared of communication – and for no real reason.
Communication is such a powerful tool. Reach out and start improving your communication with your stakeholders today.
That’s two challenges (pay it forward and improving your communication) – good luck.
Tags: environment, Green Collar Job, Marion Short, new zealand, sustainable future, waste, WasteMinz
Posted in Green Collar Jobs Q&A, Waste Management | No Comments »
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