Tauranga City Council has developed a new Waste Management and Minimisation Plan (WMMP), with a vision of ‘Tauranga, together we can reduce waste to landfill.”
Waste Management and Minimisation Plan (1.7mb pdf)
Our Waste Management and Minimisation Plan contains an overview of the kind of waste issues we’re dealing with in our city, our vision, goals and objectives, and our action plan to achieve them. It outlines how we will manage our city’s commercial and household waste to 2028.
How we’ll get there
We’ve created goals, objectives, targets and an action plan to help us achieve our vision.
Goals and objectives
Our goals are about valuing our resources, facilitating effective and efficient processes, and promoting sustainable practices.
Our objectives include:
- Encouraging everyone to think about a low waste and more circular economy in relation to the items they buy, how they’re packaged, and what will be left over to dispose of. The easiest way to minimise waste is to avoid it in the first place
- Ensuring everyone in our community can access waste services and infrastructure in a way that is equitable
- Working with our communities to reduce contamination within kerbside recycling and organic collections, and in recycling bins in our public places
- Working closely with local iwi, central government, other councils, our communities and private waste companies to find better ways to reduce waste
- Being innovative and trialing new ways and new technology to reduce waste
- Being led by tikanga and mātauranga Māori to adopt a holistic approach in taking responsibility for our waste
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with waste
Targets
We’ve set some ambitious targets to hold ourselves accountable. These include:
- Reducing the amount of household waste sent to landfill by 62% from the 2021 baseline of 200kg per capita
- Reducing the amount of organic food waste collected from the kerbside
- Increasing household reuse and recycling
- Halving the amount of waste sent to landfill from our Te Maunga Resource Recovery Park (formerly known as Te Maunga Transfer Station)
- Improving recycling of construction and demolition waste
- Diverting all biosolids from landfill (biosolids are what’s left over once sewerage has been treated)
Action Plan
We’ve developed an Action Plan that sets out how we will work with the community to achieve our vision, goals, and objectives. It sets out clear, practical actions that we’ll implement, either on our own or jointly, to achieve more effective and efficient waste management and minimisation in Tauranga.
We’ll also review it annually to make sure we’re adapting and responding to any unforeseen or emerging issues, or changes nationally and internationally.
We’ll report to council on our progress and share the results with our communities.
Results of the Draft WMMP consultation
Council received 37 submissions on the draft WMMP during the consultation period from 7 June to 7 July 2022.
The Strategy Finance and Risk Committee heard from three submitters who spoke in support of their submissions on 1 August 2022.
The final WMMP was adopted on 15 August 2022 by the Strategy Finance and Risk Committee.
Submissions received highlighted the following feedback:
- 16 submitters agreed or strongly agreed that Draft Waste Minimisation and Management Plan focuses on the right key waste issues
- 25 submitters agreed or strongly agreed with the vision of “reduce waste to landfill”
- 21 submitters agreed or strongly agreed with the draft plan’s goals, objectives, and targets
- The key issues identified in the submissions included:
- WMMP Action Plan
- Waste fees
- Improved waste facilities
- Commercial waste
- Soft plastic recycling
- Packaging
- Product stewardship
- Working at the top of the waste hierarchy and toward a circular economy
- Waste strategy Action
- Learning from and collaborating with other councils and other partnerships
- Construction and demolition waste
- Waste education
- Green waste
- Public health
- Waste to energy schemes
- Emission reductions
- Illegal dumping
- Waste management for disasters and unforeseen events
- Data collection and reporting
- Research and development centre
- Language used in the plan
- Re-introducing private waste providers
- Clarifying terminology
- The draft Plan, a summary and the submission form were available online, at all of Council’s libraries, at the Service Centre.
Waste Assessment (1.2mb pdf)
Previous Waste Management Plan
Tauranga City Council developed their first solo Waste Management and Minimisation Plan (WMMP) as required by the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 in September 2016.
Waste Management and Minimisation Plan - 2016 (4mb pdf) Joint Waste Assessment (1.6mb pdf)
Tauranga City Council and Western Bay of Plenty District Council developed their first joint Waste Management and Minimisation Plan (WMMP) as required by the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 in September 2010.
Joint Waste Management and Minimisation Plan - September 2010 (3.62mb pdf)