Reduce your waste and help local schools minimise waste and grow food

Over 50% of our waste is biodegradable. Organic waste to landfill degrades our water, pollutes our air, and robs our soil of life. You can transform the problem into the solution by feeding this waste to worms and building soil with our easy and affordable service. Get a year subscription to our worm farm hire during May to contribute to Inspire Change, our social impact initiative reducing waste and growing food in local schools.

With the support of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s Environmental Enhancement Fund, Why Waste’s Inspire Change initiative kicked off in 5 Bay of Plenty schools in term one of 2019. After co-designing individual collection strategies for each school, these student-led programmes are capturing biodegradable waste and making soil with it.  

Partnering with garden to table organisation PiPS (People, Plants in Schools) we’re setting out to round out the cycle by taking those nutrients from table back to garden. We’re happy to report that so far it’s going really well, the kids are championing the project and the teachers are really enthusiastic - all largely to do with the amazing school gardens that PiPS has set up, as well as all the incredible community relationships which have emerged.  

Where you come in

Due to Inspire Change’s initial success a need has emerged for more worm farms for two reasons:

Firstly, the kids are doing such a great job that the amount of waste being diverted outstrips the small numbers of bins we initially put in - we need to up the capacity to keep up with their waste minimising efforts.

Second, we have new schools interested in coming on board that weren’t part of the initial funding - by joining us you can help inspire change in a growing network of schools.

How it works

We think collaboration is the best way to make a difference, so we’re creating opportunities for people using our service to join together to donate that same service into schools. Each new year-long subscription in May will fund a quarter of a worm farm - fully serviced, including waste consultant contact time with the ‘kaitiaki crew’ of each school.

You can still sign up for our monthly service, but only full year subscriptions can participate in this offer. It’s a low cost to everyone involved, but together we can inspire change. Currently we are servicing the Upper North Island only, but we’d still love to hear from you as Why Waste Worms will be going nationwide very soon and we’d love to stay connected.

Fill out the form in the subscribe button below to register for the Why Waste Worms service.


Not quite ready and want to learn more about the worm farm hire service. No worries! Check out our How it Works page or click the button below.