Jane Nees BOP Regional Councillor www.janenees.co.nz

The regional council provides a budget of about $75,000 a year to implement the Regional Waste Strategy.

This funding enables a Waste Resources Advisory Group, made up of business, community and local government representatives, to allocate about $50,000 through a contestable community fund to support local waste minimisation projects. In the last year six organisations were selected for funding.

In the first six months since the funds were distributed, the results have been impressive. Five of the organisations have diverted in excess of 30 tonnes of waste from landfill.

Thousands of dollars have been saved in landfilling fees and income has been produced for charitable trusts by converting wastes into saleable products.

In Whakatane, 6.5 tonnes of waste construction materials have been collected from building sites, sorted and sold.

In Tauranga, the Good Neighbours Charitable Trust has provided 74,000 free meals created from café and supermarket food that was bound for the skip bin and have diverted more than 11 tonnes of food from landfill.

Rotorua District Council educated and provided worm bins to 70 local families so their food waste will no longer end up in the rubbish bin, instead being converted to garden compost.

Tauranga City Council has collected more than 8.3 tonnes of coffee grounds from city cafes and diverted this from landfill to a composting facility where it's producing high quality commercial compost for on-sale to the public.

Also in Tauranga, the Gourmet Night Markets trained 64 waste minimisation staff, who spread a waste minimisation message to more than 60,000 people attending events in the Bay of Plenty during summer.

They are all great initiatives which show what can be done to reduce waste.

If you have views on this or any other issue, you can email me at neesj@xtra.co.nz or ring me on 07 579 5150.