Operation Zero Waste

But despite my values, the life of convenience and disposability was justified by my own busyness. I mean, I didn’t do nothing for sustainability. I stopped buying craft supplies like foam shapes and glitter because we all know where artwork goes after the fridge. We used ‘compostable’ nappies which kept my conscience clean. But ashamedly, we were doing some things which were just lazy, like sending recyclables to landfill.

In November 2023 I attended a hui with the Hamilton City Council’s waste minimisation team. We learnt that everything which goes to landfill doesn’t decompose, even the compostable nappies my conscience was hanging on. However, I was inspired hearing how a local centre reduced their landfill to nil. I realised it was possible to be a sustainable ECE centre and I knew this to be important. This was the ignition of our internal evaluation “Operation Zero Waste 2024!”  

With newfound beliefs, I set to bringing my team, community and tamariki on this journey. Our team leaders were overwhelmingly passionate about sustainability and led their teams to plan manageable changes in each room and design a local curriculum rich in sustainable practices.

First, we tackled the easy big waste items. Paper towels were replaced by Mum 2 Mum face washers; I purchased 300. A week later another hundred, then six months later another hundred. 500 is just enough for our 80 children and 18 staff. We repurposed rubbish bins into used hand-towel bins and purchased baskets to hold the clean towels. If we ran out of hand towels, we would hang a bath towel in the bathroom till the next load dried. To keep this amount of washing manageable we have a ‘no fold’ policy.

Then we started recycling, sourcing a 240L commingle recycle bin for paper, plastic and tins. This surprisingly was not big enough and boxes need to be taken to the refuse transfer centre regularly. Kaiako Tash and I began taking home food waste to feed to our chickens.

Team Leader Bron started a worm farm and sparked an ongoing project with the tamariki, reusing milk bottles to collect worm wees which whānau take home for their gardens. The toddler team made recycled paper and created wildflower seed bombs. The preschool team has Adopted a Drain which they keep clean to protect our streams and sparked learning about native wildlife and exploring local wetlands.

The big scary change for me was switching to reusable nappies. I expected this to be controversial but whānau and kaiako support has been positive. We applied for and were granted funding through Hamilton City Council’s waste minimisation fund, with which we remodeled our laundry adding a second Washer-Dryer. After trialing different reusable nappies, we decided on local company Bear and Moo and we found beautiful pull ups from Kekoa. Both these companies offer wholesale discounts which made reusables affordable. Infant kaiako Jess uses reusables at home and she shared here xpertise and refined our washing routines.

On Friday 15 November I felt a great sense of satisfaction as I unscrewed all the paper towel holders from the walls. This week we are removing all our rubbish bins and replacing them with recycle stations, and reusable nappies are arriving daily. Now sustainability sits at the top of our philosophy statement. We are committed to this journey!