An overview of progress and success with a Kai pilot initiative in Ōtautahi with active leadership from Healthy Families Ōtautahi Christchurch.
Healthy Families Ōtautahi Christchurch is a partner on a pilot compost system aimed at hands-on teaching children and teachers and their wider kura whānau to make great compost, grow nutritious kai, learn about microbusiness and accelerate zero waste goals.
We started in week one of Lockdown 2020 out of frustration of the disconnection of many whānau to growing kai sustainably which was leading to the increasing dependence on foodbanks.
Healthy Families Ōtautahi Christchurch has partnered with a commercial waste management company collecting urban food waste. At 3 different settings (a community garden; a school/kura; a public park) , together with community volunteers, we are trialling making a low cost, accessible compost system to produce highly nutritious compost and kai, reduce food waste to landfill and accelerate zero waste aspirations at each setting.
The pilot project is so far really successful.
We started with an idea to trial 10 sites across the city. Two sites in and we have learned that in order for this to be sustainable for people and land, we need to go deeper not wider. So we’ve pulled our focus back to two sites with a third site about to be activated shortly (June 2021).
We have successfully engaged approximately 60 tamariki and kaiako; reduced by many tonnes the amount of food waste going to landfill and within the kura a microbusiness is being developed with the business students. AND the kura, Te Pā o Rākaihautū. tell us that we’ve accelerated their zero waste goals by 2-4 years. The kura chef is also assisting the māra-kai lead to plan planting at scale of vegetables that feed the 300 tamariki each week which reduces their cost of buying kai.
This model is scalable, low cost, produces nutritious kai and has the potential to employ people to develop a microbusiness. It also strengthens food sovereignty and as importantly, reduces food waste to landfill and clearly as we’ve heard from Te Pā, accelerates zero waste goals.
We’re still in pilot phase so are quietly testing our programme approach and how to get the best outcomes and, practically, testing our compost method in 3 different settings.
The three settings in Ōtautahi Christchurch are:
- A community garden – Seven Oaks, Waltham with Ara Institute
- A school / kura – Te Pā o Rākaihautū (Te Pā) Linwood
- Public lease land (7 hectare) - Nuku te Ao Trust, Red Zone, Dallington
We have requests from different parts of the country wanting to learn more about what we’re doing here.
In order to leverage the success of the pilot and to scale it to distribute the successes more widely, more resources are required. We’ve had one grant of $3K from HFOC to activate the first site. Our team of four, the 20:20 Compost team is voluntary, except for the one HFOC Systems Innovator role.
We need to fund a Co-Ordinator and assistants to scale the educational activities, both in person and online, to many more people.
Lack of resource limits our ability to scale and transfer the scheme to other areas at the moment.
The next stage of the project is to scale the process in a public setting which is Poareare with Noku Te Ao Trust. The Trust holds a 12 month lease on 7 hectare in Dallington, designated red zone land, and are keen to extend the mahi of the trial at Te Pā o Rākaihautū.
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