A truck delivering another load of food waste to Ecogas in Papakura Photo: Zane Edwardson
Food waste from Auckland's kerbside bins travels more than 250 kilometres south to be processed at the only such plant in the country.
Having Auckland's food scraps dumped onto your rural backyard sounds scandalous, but in the North Island town of Reporoa there's no fuss about the thousands of tonnes carted here every week.
As one truck drops the waste, another truck picks up fertiliser from the same site to spread on local sheep and dairy farms.
It is also the place where methane gas is being piped into the national gas supply, just over the back fence, and power is sent to heat a nearby commercial tomato-growing greenhouse.
They are three of nine byproducts for the food waste dropped at Ecogas. Its catch-cry is "take your food waste full circle" and it all happens inside a series of large sheds, container ships and tanks.
It is estimated that 327,000 tonnes of food are sent to landfill every year, making up 30 percent of our landfill. As the waste breaks down it releases methane, a greenhouse gas.
This plant accounts for a tiny fraction of New Zealand's organic waste, turning that biogas into renewable energy. It is the only one of its kind in the country.
Andrew Fisher, the co-founder of the Ecogas plant in Reporoa, is on a mission to change that, not just for the sake of the environment but to save New Zealand's reputation.
"It's embarrassing," he tells The Detail. "Going overseas, if people knew how pathetic we were, we would be embarrassed.
"As a society, we tell the world we're green but the reality is we're greenwashing and if we're not going to do it in households, why are we going out to the world and asking for a premium on our food and everything else?"
Ecogas co-founder Andrew Fisher standing next to a pile of food waste at the company's Papakura plant Photo: Sharon Brettkelly
Fisher has brought a bus load of "eco ambassadors" from Auckland on a tour of the plant - the first of what he hopes will become regular trips - to find out about the anaerobic digestion process that breaks down the organic matter and turns it into energy and animal feed products.
This group are all converts to Auckland Council's kerbside food waste collections, spreading the word at community events and knocking on doors. But many Aucklanders are not convinced. About two years after the initiative was introduced, the 2000-odd tonnes collected weekly are just half what was expected.
Fisher wants this group to go back to their communities, their churches and youth groups to persuade them to put their food waste into the little bins, not the red-top rubbish bins whose contents are emptied at landfill.
"We're winning the wrong competitions," he says.
"Ireland, 28 percent of their energy is from renewable gas, Denmark is over 50 percent and heading towards 100 percent. We have about 100 landfills, Ireland only has four. Ireland has 48 ecogas sites, we've got one."
A former SAS soldier, Fisher owns 15 percent of Ecogas alongside majority owner Pioneer Energy, a company owned by Central Lakes Trust.
Fisher also owns partner company Ecostock, which handles the kerbside and commercial food waste collections, and manages fertiliser distribution, while Pioneer brings what he calls the big finance and the big infrastructure to the energy side of the business.
Ecogas general manager Andy Bedford talking to a group of "eco ambassadors" from Auckland at the Reporoa plant. The Detail's Sharon Brettkelly (far-right) joined the tour. Photo: Zane Edwardson
"We're not focussed on waste," says Fisher. "We're focussed on resource."
On the way to Reporoa village Fisher points out the rugby field former All Black captain Sam Cane played on, he talks of plans to convert the fossil-fuelled trucks of a local transport company into biofuel and explains how the town's sheep and dairy farms are fertilised by Ecogas' own Fertify brand.
"The locals call it Jafa juice," he jokes.
At the two-hectare Ecogas site, general manager Andy Bedford opens the roller door to the "reception room" for the waste trucks that have come from Auckland. As part of its circular story, those same trucks carry building materials from the central North Island to Auckland for roading and other construction projects.
Bedford shows how the pile of waste is sorted and unwanted materials separated, including the pink biodegradable bags that hold the food scraps.
"You would be shocked at what we receive through here from Auckland kerbside. We get denim jeans, we've had a butane gas bottle. At the end of last year we had about 20 bits of metal chucked into council kerbside, which caused about $65,000 worth of damage."
He explains how Ecogas' anaerobic digestion differs to composting, and why it is expanding the plant so that it can increase the amount of food waste it processes from 75,000 tonnes a year to 100,000. It also has ambitions to open more than 20 sites around the country, including a plant in Christchurch.
"A lot of councils around New Zealand, their organics are mixed in with their refuse bin. They don't have the ability to separate organics so that refuse goes to landfill," says Bedford.
"Every kg of organics that goes to landfill creates 1.2 kg of CO2 emissions, whereas if the product comes to Ecogas the anaerobic process we do is fully enclosed so there are 0.0027 kg [of emissions] per kg of organics that we receive and that includes our transport emissions for the backload of trucking we do."
Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here.
You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
