Waste (sustainable operations)

Our long-term vision is that AUT won't send any waste to landfill – instead, our waste will be reduced, reused, recycled, repurposed, or composted. AUT will be a place where staff and students are inspired to rethink the future through a circular economy approach.

What we're doing to meet waste targets

AUT's short-term target in the Sustainability Roadmap to reduce waste to landfill by 50% by 2025, with a 2018 baseline. We will:

• Expand the organic waste collection across all campuses
• Improve quality and extent of waste data
• Put in place a new waste contract to support increased waste diversion
• Improve the education and awareness of staff and students around waste related issues
• Increase partnerships with internal and external stakeholders to provide knowledge, collaboration, and exchange of materials

Waste initiatives on campus

Here are some of the initiatives we're working on around our campuses to reduce waste.

Organic waste

Organic waste is collected in some buildings on the City Campus. The aim is to roll this out across all three campuses with a mix of onsite composting as well as collections for processing waste off campus. The collections are by We Compost and taken to Envirofert for commercial composting. There are eight worm farms/bins for processing food waste from the School of Hospitality and Tourism and a compost hub on the North Campus.

Recycling

AUT aims to divert as much waste from landfill as possible. These items can be recycled on campus:

• Batteries, fluorescent tubes, metal and electronic equipment: all three campuses
• Mobile phones: there are recycling stations at North and City campuses
• Used furniture: stored for reuse at AUT, donated to charity or where it has reached the end of its useful life some parts are recycled
• Used pens: collected at all AUT libraries for recycling through TerraCycle
• Carpet tiles: AUT uses carpet tiles across all campuses and many are 100% recyclable

Cutting out plastic waste

AUT is working with staff and students to eliminate single use plastic from AUT. If we don’t act now, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea (by weight) than fish.

AUT has reduced the use of single-use plastics by eliminating plastic bags, straws, cutlery, and plastic coffee cups at all AUT run food outlets.

Many AUT cafes and events now use reusable crockery and cutlery, and all takeaway packaging from AUT cafes is compostable, except recyclable drink bottles and cans. AUT Student Association’s Vesbar offers metal reusable straws.