Zero Waste in the Western Bay of Plenty District (including Katikati and Te Puke)
Preaching to “The Converted” #8: Jamie Tuvae me tana whānau
24/03/2019
Our Position on Essential Oil Use in Homemade Toiletries
26/03/2019
This guide covers Western Bay of Plenty District (including Katikati and Te Puke) only. For other parts of the Bay of Plenty, please refer to the Zero Waste in the Bay of Plenty homepage.
.
.
Our heartfelt gratitude to Sugarcube Studios, for bringing our guides to life – designing a map for us and creating such joyful imagery to go with it!
Lots of pantry staples – from flours, grains and rice, through to condiments, spices, legumes, nuts, seeds and liquid foods – usually come in single-use packets. These shops stock all manner of pantry foods loose in bulk bins (or operate return & refill systems for their packaging), allowing you to put these goods straight into your own bags, jars, containers and bottles, and skip the packaging!
- Indo Spice World, 163 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke – stocks a wide range of bulk bin dried goods including spices, grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, flours etc.
- Khyber Food & Spices, 27 Jellicoe St, Te Puke – stocks a range of bulk bin dried goods including spices, grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, flours etc.
- Much More, 108 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke – stocks a range of bulk bin dried goods including spices, grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, flours etc.
- Te Puna Deli, 17b Minden Road, Te Puna – stocks a range of bulk dry foods such as flour, sugar, rice, lentils, nuts, seeds and spices.
- Vege & Spices, 38 Main Road, Katikati – stocks a range of bulk bin dried goods including spices, grains, pulses, nuts and seeds.
- Spice Traders, 1 Main Road, Katikati – stocks a wide range of bulk bin dried goods including spices, grains, pulses, nuts, seeds and flours. You may need to spend a bit of time here to get around the slightly random layout!
- Supermarkets – most supermarkets have bulk bin/pick and mix sections with wholefoods (BYO bags for these). However they’re pretty expensive, often more so than equivalent ingredients in packets (bah!), and frequently much pricier than the bulk bins at Indian groceries. But look out for when things in the bulk bin aisle in supermarkets are on special because sometimes you can get a good deal!
The following shops sell unpackaged meat, sausages, smallgoods, seafood, cheese and/or deli foods and will happily put these straight into a BYO container – woohoo!
- New Te Puke Seafoods, 106 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke
- Te Puna Deli, 17b Minden Road, Te Puna – BYO container for unpackaged deli products – including olives, slices of specialty meats, and cuts of unpackaged cheese!
- Unpackaged live mussels – there are a number of stores that stock unpackaged live mussels at self-serve counters. We put them straight into upcycled ice cream containers/BYO containers rather than the plastic bags the stores usually provide. You can find unpackaged live mussels at New World Te Puke, 12 Jocelyn Street, Te Puke.
- Supermarket delis – Most supermarkets have a deli section offering unpackaged meat, seafood, olives and other antipasti, salads, lunch foods and more. All Countdown, New World and PAK’nSAVE supermarkets officially allow you to BYO container for these goods!
The following stores bake and sell unpackaged bread and bakery goods (in some of these stores some items might be pre-packed or wrapped in cling film, just avoid those things!). Simply BYO bread bag to put the bread/bakery goods into. Some places will bag up their bread later in the day, so you want to get in there before they do that (i.e. before 1pm).
- Marigold Cafe, 93 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke
- Te Puke Bakery, 137 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke
- A4 Bakery & Cafe, 30 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke – mostly wrapped in plastic, but it is possible to get some bread without packaging.
- Get Mount Sourdough Co breads unpackaged from the following places: Te Puna Deli, 17b Minden Road, Te Puna; and FreshChoice Omokoroa, 160 Omokoroa Road, Omokoroa
- Most supermarkets (and even some Four Squares) stock unpackaged bread, bread rolls and/or bakery goods in their bakery section – just pop them into your BYO bags!
Markets – No two ways about it, if you want a good source of unpackaged (often locally grown) produce, markets are the place to go! BYO bags to get fresh produce from the Katikati Plant and Produce Market, Katikati A&P Showgrounds, Waterford Road on Friday afternoons; the monthly Katikati Lions Moggies Market, Katikati War Memorial Hall, Main Road; or the monthly Te Puke Community Market, Jubilee Park, Commerce Lane. At most markets you can meet the grower/producer face-to-face, making them an ideal place to start fruitful conversations about waste-free food, and to develop relationships and systems that enable you to get your favourite fruit, vege and preserves without the packaging. At markets you may also find local producers of pre-made foods like tofu, preserves and sauces etc. Have a chat to see if you can leave containers with the stall holders for them to fill with your desired product for you to pick up from them the following week, or if the stallholder uses glass jars for packaging, ask whether they will take their empty glass jars back for sterilisation and reuse.
Look out for places that sell whole or ground coffee beans unpackaged, and bring your own bag and container to fill. Going direct to coffee roasters is the best option, but you can also look out for bulk dispensers of unpackaged coffee in other stores (which usually have in-store grinders also). Here are the spots we found that offer these options:
- Uh-oh! No unpackaged coffee! Have we missed anywhere in Western Bay of Plenty?
We avoid teabags as most have plastic in them, which we don’t want in our tea or our soil. Using loose leaf tea is an easy way to get around this. The trick is to find somewhere that sells loose leaf tea packaging-free, so you can put the leaves straight into BYO jars/containers! You’ll find loose tea leaves in bulk dispensers at:
- Indo Spice World, 163 Jellicoe St, Te Puke.
- Bell‘s loose leaf tea comes packaged in 100% cardboard/paper packaging and is available in all supermarkets/Four Squares etc.
Sourcing cow’s milk without the plastic bottles or non-dairy milk without the dreaded Tetra-pak is no mean feat! We’ve found the following options:
- Milk powder in bulk bins at Indo Spice World, 163 Jellicoe St, Te Puke; and Khyber Food & Spices, 27 Jellicoe St, Te Puke.
Look out for places that sell beer on tap and BYO bottles/flagons to fill up. Breweries are awesome, but lots of liquor stores offer this option too! We found beer on tap at:
- Uh-oh! No beer on tap in Western Bay of Plenty! Have we missed somewhere?
Also, don’t forget that most liquor stores do ‘swappa crates’ of beer – i.e. crates of twelve 745ml bottles of classic NZ beer (e.g. Lion Red/Brown, Speights, Tui, Export Gold etc.) which can be returned (when the bottles are empty) and are then sent back to the brewery for sterilisation and refill (a better outcome for glass bottles than recycling because reusing the same bottle over and over requires way less energy and resources than recycling).
- We didn’t come across any other unpackaged drink options in Western Bay of Plenty – have we missed anywhere – drinking chocolate, juice, fizzy drinks, kombucha?
Reusable drinking vessels (cups and water bottles)
Say “no more” to disposable takeaway coffee cups and plastic water bottles by getting yourself reusables instead! Get reusable metal water bottles at Xcetera, 47 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke.
For reusable takeaway coffee cups, you’ll find the Keep Cup brand at Marigold Cafe, 93 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke; or the stainless steel Avanti GoCup is sold at Xcetera, 47 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke.
Reusable bags (shopping bags, produce bags and bulk bin bags)
Plastic shopping bags are a menace, but so too are those plastic produce bags for fruit and vege or the plastic bags often offered alongside bulk bins at bulk stores. You can avoid them by bringing your own bags or buying a set of reusable produce bags. You can get 100% organic cotton Rethink produce bags at New World Te Puke, 12 Jocelyn Street, Te Puke.
- Spice Traders, 1 Main Road, Katikati – stocks laundry/cleaning powders in bulk bins.
- Eco Planet and Next Generation laundry powder both come in a cardboard box with a cardboard scoop – no plastic lining! You can get one or the other (or both) from most New World and PAK’nSAVE supermarkets – keep an eye out.
- Dishcloths/cleaning cloths – We encourage people to move away from using dishclothes, sponges and bench wipes made out of synthetic material (as these leach microfibres and they’re also destined for landfill when they wear down) and to use natural fibre cloths instead. Get Bianca Lorenne cotton cloths from Xcetera, 47 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke.
- Baking Soda is an essential ingredient for DIY cleaning products. You can get it unpackaged in bulk from Khyber Food & Spices, 27 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke; Indo Spice World, 163 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke; and Spice Traders, 1 Main Road, Katikati (also stocks white vinegar in bulk dispensers).
Bamboo toothbrushes
A great alternative to plastic toothbrushes because they have wooden, home compostable handles (though bristles are still plastic and need to be removed from the handle and put in a rubbish bin). You can find bamboo toothbrushes at New World Te Puke, 12 Jocelyn Street, Te Puke.
Unpackaged Bars of Soap
Get soap without packaging at Giftrapt, 82 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke.
Bars for Shampoo/Shaving/Deodorant/Moisturiser
We’d encourage you to get your everyday toiletries – from shampoo through to shaving soap – in bar form, which means you totally avoid the plastic/aluminium bottles that liquid products usually come in! You can get Jeymar shampoo and shaving soap bars are available at Giftrapt, 82 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke
Shaving
Avoid plastic shavers that are designed to be disposable and go for 100% metal razors that will last you decades and only require the 100% metal and recyclable blades to be replaced (or sharpened with a leather strop!), and remember to use a bar of shaving soap instead of shaving foam that comes in an aerosol can (see above) – note, you might want a shaving brush to make this work. You can get most barbers to order in razors and replacement blades, so ask your local, or order online. You can get shaving brushes from Giftrapt, 82 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke (along with shaving soap bars).
Ingredients for DIY cosmetics/toiletries
- Baking Soda is an essential ingredient in lots of homemade toiletries such as toothpaste and deodorant. You can get it unpackaged in bulk from Khyber Food & Spices, 27 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke; Indo Spice World, 163 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke; and Spice Traders, 1 Main Road, Katikati.
- Regional Waste and Recycling Directory – the Bay of Plenty Regional Council has an excellent, user friendly waste and recycling directory on their website. So if you’ve got a hard to recycle item or material (including e-waste and whiteware), find a place to recycle it here.
- Why Waste – a commercial composting solution for organic waste. Why Waste runs two separate services for businesses and households: businesses’ waste is collected and taken to a dedicated, commercial hot composting facility that can break down most organic/biodegradable items. For households, Why Waste leases (and sells) worm farms to remain on the customer’s property, so that individuals have a stake in the proper disposal of their organic waste, and learn how to use a worm farm. Leo from Why Waste will come over to check in and provide maintenance every fortnight, but day-to-day it is the leaseholder’s responsibility.
- Green waste/Garden waste – accepted for a charge at Katikati Recycling Centre, corner of Tetley and Wills Roads, and Te Puke Recycling Centre, 36 Station Road.