Want to know more?
Can I put cooked food in my food scraps bin?
You sure can. While we recommend putting your leftover cooked food in the fridge or freezer to keep it fresher for longer, we recognise we can't all be perfect all the time. Sometimes cooked food can't be eaten as you'd intended and it's best to place this in your kerbside food scraps bin.
Can meat or cheese go in my food scraps bin?
Absolutely! While it’s not recommended to place old meat or cheese into a compost bin or worm farm, it is recommended to put any meat bones, or old meat and cheese that’s no longer edible into your kerbside food scraps bin.
How about old citrus fruit and peels?
While citrus (like lemon, lime or orange peels) are damaging to worms in a worm farm, it’s no problem in your kerbside food scraps bin.
What about old fish, fish bones or shellfish shells?
Yes, that can all go into your kerbside food scraps bin.
What about old cooking fat?
Yes, that can go in too.
Old bread or baking?
You bet.
Is there anything that can’t go in?
As long as it’s old food or food scraps, it can go into your kerbside food scraps bin. Some councils (like Auckland) allow compostable bags but we can’t accept these currently. You can use a plain brown paper bag instead (e.g. an old fruit and produce paper bag from the supermarket) so long as it doesn’t have any words or images printed on it (we don’t want the chemicals from the dye in our compost).
Got more questions about food scraps?
Kerbside education brochure (1.6mb pdf)
Need a new food scraps bin?
If your bin is missing or broken you can get a new one by selecting ‘missing bin’ or ‘broken bin’ in the drop down menu on the service request webpage.
Request a new food scraps bin
Want to see how your food scraps get composted?
Want to give composting at home a go?
Check out our handy guides about the different ways you can compost at home to help get you started.
Are you recycling right?
Find out more about what can be recycled here in Tauranga.
*Over 60% of respondents in our ‘Food Scraps Kerbside Collection Survey’ undertaken in June 2024 reported using their kerbside food scraps bin. Another 24% reported using a compost bin or worm farm at home. The survey had a sample size of 237 and was representative of the Tauranga community in terms of gender, age and location. The same survey was shared with our ‘Kōrero mai - Let’s Talk Tauranga’ recipients and over 80% of respondents reporting either composting, worm-farming or using their kerbside food scraps bin for their food scraps. This latter survey had a sample size of 1,000+ but is not as reflective of our community as the former one mentioned above in terms of age, gender and location.