Specially-wrapped Peanut Slabs in plant-based compostable packaging went on sale in Wellington and Porirua from Monday as part of an eight-week trial.
Slab eaters are being asked to put their used wrappers into a special collection box based at the retail outlet, which are then taken to For the Better Good’s Edible Earth Urban Micro Farm in Cannon's Creek for composting.
That compost is then used to feed an organic garden at the old Porirua bowling club, providing fresh fruit and vegetables for use by Porirua charity WELLFed which, in turns, helps to feed the local community.
Whittaker’s co-chief operating officer Holly Whittaker said it was important for the company to launch a compostable product that had the infrastructure in place to support its regeneration.
Turns out, that infrastructure was only five minutes’ drive from its Elsdon factory.
As creators of Better Bottle, a bottled water product which comes in a compostable plant-based bottle, founder of the social enterprise, Jayden Klinac said scaling up the farm’s composting capability to cater for other businesses like Whittaker’s made sense.
“Now, it’s about getting more packaging diverted from landfill, or ending up in the environment, and actually put it into a place like Edible Earth’s farms where it can be turned into soil and nutrients and grow organic food.
“The process starts with gathering resources all diverted from landfill, we’re diverting food waste, we’re diverting garden waste, we’re collecting out packaging, now we’re collecting Whittaker’s packaging here in Porirua,” Klinac said.
“We add all of those together. It takes about three months to cycle through from lettuce leaves all the way through to dark, rich compost at the end. Generally, we add beneficial microbes to make sure the compost is really high quality.
“We then take it out, let it mature, let the worms work through it a little bit, and then it basically goes straight onto the garden,” Klinac explained.
Whittaker said it was hoped success during the trial would see it rolled out nationwide.
“You want to compost as close to the source of consumption as possible. Edible Earth has micro farms right throughout the country, from Auckland right down to Queenstown.
“So they’ll take care of the collection and composting right back to the local Edible Earth site, but we’ll still obviously look to utilise this farm in Porirua.
“All things going well, we’d like to roll this out more broadly as soon as we can, as part of a broader programme that we have to update all of our packaging with sustainable material by 2025,” Whittaker said.
