Waste Minimisation

 

Waste Minimisation Strategies Download our Waste Minimisation Services brochure (445 KB)

Resource Recovery Centres

Zero Waste

WASTE MINIMISATION STRATEGIES

Envision helps communities and businesses develop waste minimisation strategies that reduce costs, improve resource efficiency and create local development opportunities.
Our services include:
  • Advice on Waste Management Plans and contracts
  • Communications strategies
  • Community consultation
  • Policy development and advocacy

RESOURCE RECOVERY CENTRES

Resource Recovery Centres and Parks are important building blocks of sustainable communities. They capture and consolidate discarded products and materials so they can be repaired and re-sold, or dismantled and recycled back into industrial systems. In effect they are reverse-retail facilities, helping close the loop at the community level. Resource recovery facilities create local employment and business opportunities, reduce waste disposal costs and provide a focal point for education, volunteerism, and community involvement.
 
A community of any size can support a Resource Recovery Centre (RRC). Most include facilities for public drop-off and resale of used furniture, household items, construction and demolition material, greenwaste and recyclable commodity materials (glass, cans, plastics, aluminium etc). Some also have facilities to run public education programmes.
 
Resource Recovery Parks (RRPs) take the concept one step further, providing space and common facilities for recycling businesses to co-locate in business clusters. RRParks are large, complex, materials handling facilities combining all the functions of community-run Resource Recovery Centres with commercial-scale resource recovery operations. Other terms used to describe Resource Recovery Parks include Recycling Estates, Eco-Industrial Parks and Sustainability Growth Parks.
 
Resource recovery facilities compete with waste disposal facilities for resources. Just as landfills and incinerators attract wasted resources so do Resource Recovery Centres and Parks. However, whereas landfills and incinerators destroy resources, creating long-term environmental hazards, resource recovery facilities preserve the value of resources and create local business and job opportunities.
 
Resource Recovery Centres and Parks are part of the new infrastructure necessary for moving towards a zero waste society.
Our services include:
  • Concept development
  • Project management
  • Communication programmes and training

 

Clients
Envision has helped the following clients develop resource recovery facility design concepts:
  • Auckland City Council (Waiheke Island)
  • Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council (Perth)
  • Far North District Council
  • Porirua City Council
  • Queenstown-Lakes District Council

 

Envision Reports

ZERO WASTE

Zero Waste is a whole-system approach to addressing the problem of unsustainable resource flows. Zero Waste encompasses waste elimination at source, through product design and producer responsibility; and waste reduction strategies further down the supply chain such as Cleaner Production, product dismantling, remanufacturing, re-use, recycling and composting.
 
Communities that adopt Zero Waste as a goal aim to switch from wasteful and damaging waste disposal methods to value-added resource recovery systems that help build sustainable local economies.
 
Envision personnel helped establish the Zero Waste concept in New Zealand and an international Zero Waste movement (www.zwia.org). We have worked with many local authorities and communities to help them create local development opportunities through Zero Waste strategies.
Our services include:
  • Presentations and workshops
  • Communication programmes
  • Advice on Waste Management Plans and contracts
  • Zero Waste strategy development

 

Envision Reports

 

The following articles and presentations were written and made by Warren Snow while a Trustee of Zero Waste New Zealand.
 
Articles
Presentations