Tena koutou katoa
Congratulations to Raglan, how exciting to reach our highest diversion from landfill rate ever of 76%. What an amazing achievement! Regardless of our high visitor numbers, we continue to steadily progress towards zero waste and model to other communities nationally on how to minimize waste. Reducing our waste saves precious resources - with the global population now more than 7 billion and New Zealand’s population expected to reach 5 milllion by 2050, it's a wise decision to refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle and compost as many of our resources as possible.
Our community couldn’t achieve these diversion results without the strong support of Waikato District Council, investing ratepayer's money back into the community by contracting a community organisation, Xtreme Waste, to deliver waste and recycling services to the Whaingaroa catchment. Statistically, it has been proven again and again that the community sector delivers higher diversion rates from landfill, puts more money back into the community through providing more jobs, provides greater environmental benefits and contributes to building greater social capital within communities than the private sector. A big and warm thank-you to Waikato District Council for working alongside our community!
With people like Ben Galloway in our community making high quality, funky sandals from 95% recycled materials, we are showing the world that we have what it takes to use our waste streams to create high value products. The list of clever artists and businesses in our community who use waste creatively to produce art and make a living is a long one!
In the past year, we had a reduction in the amount of waste to landfill by 7 tonnes, that’s the equivalent of 7 small cars, a small reduction, but a reduction nonetheless.
Once again, congratulations to the Raglan community, to the Raglan Community Board for their on-going support, to the Xtreme Waste crew and to Waikato District Council for together increasing the diversion rate to 76%. We’re eager and energized to continue this trend and find more ways of reducing what we send to landfill at Hampton Downs.
Forward to Zero Waste …
Warm Regards, Jacqui Forbes
021 0431127
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