Food and Energy: Harnessing Food & Organic Waste

At least 11 tonnes of food is wasted in Ōtaki town every week. This amounts to about $500 per household being lost in a year, quite apart from the landfill emissions. A huge amount of energy used to process and transport this food is also wasted. 

While reducing waste is the most desirable (and Energise Ōtaki has other projects focused on that), this also presents an opportunity to use this food waste (and possibly other organic waste) to produce energy which can be used locally, or to augment the local energy grid supply.   

Energise Ōtaki will be exploring this opportunity further. If viable, revenue from this project will be used in a wider Energise Ōtaki  community investment fund.