What does the Gorilla do with all the construction and demolition waste we recover? Just ask the avocados, horses and potatoes that are thriving on the recycled products we produce!

At Green Gorilla we do our utmost to make good with your waste – not landfill.
Your old plasterboard becomes mineral-rich fertiliser for fruit and vegetables. Your wooden off-cuts are chipped down into animal bedding. And your organic waste is transformed into nutrient-packed compost. We’re all about helping what’s thrown out live again. Talk to us about a better solution for your waste – or purchasing these beautifully recycled products that can help you smash your sustainability goals.

Wood chip

New Zealand has a huge wood waste problem with timber making up a significant part of all waste going to landfill. But we’re working on it.

TREATED TIMBER THAT FUELS KIWI INDUSTRY
Building timber is usually treated with chemical preservatives to stop burrowing insects and wood rot. This type of the wood is widely used to build houses across Auckland and New Zealand. Because of the chemicals it contains, this timber can’t be used in animal bedding or as a landscaping material. But it can power cement works!

Green Gorilla has partnered with Golden Bay Cement to turn treated wood waste into chips that can be used as clean bio-fuel to replace coal at their cement works near Whangarei.

We are proud to be associated with Golden Bay Cement in this critical project to divert significant volumes of wood waste away from landfill.

WHAT HAPPENS TO UNTREATED TIMBER WASTE?
Untreated timber waste usually comes from wooden pallets and these are ideal for processing into landscaping chips and high-quality animal bedding. All wood recycling takes place at our Onehunga processing facilities where the wood is stripped of all nails and screws and then shredded to produce large volumes of dry, clean, high-quality wooden chips.

Our animal bedding wood chip is suitable for horses and cows with bulk sales of the bedding chips leaving our facility each week to go to Auckland, Northland and Waikato farms.

Absorbent, free-draining, hard-wearing and high-quality – and so much better for the environment than this valuable resource ending up in landfill.

Green Gorilla’s untreated timber chips can also be used for landscaping. These chips are free from seeds and plant matter and give you a great free draining ‘knitted’ product that’s slow to breakdown and gives long-term stability.

All our wood chip products can be collected from our Onehunga facility or delivered to your site.

Gypsum

Gypsum is a soft, sulphate mineral, widely used as a fertiliser, compost or cement additive. It’s also the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard chalk and plasterboard.

Thanks to Green Gorilla, gypsum is getting a new lease of life. We take plasterboard off-cuts from construction and building waste that would otherwise have gone to landfill, separate the gypsum from the paper in the plasterboard and after grinding, sieving and removing contaminants, we’re left with beautiful, calcium and sulphur-rich gypsum.

This can then be used to enrich New Zealand soil and as a super growth booster for fruit like avocados. Who’d have thought?

COMPOST

Around 20% of waste sent to landfills is organic. This means there is a whole lot of space taken up in landfills with materials that don’t need to be in there. And when food is trapped in landfill, the nutrients it contains are also trapped.

Composting is a natural way of recycling that keeps food scraps out of landfill and returns their nutrients to the soil. It also means this natural waste does not release harmful greenhouse gases like it would if it was buried in landfill.

Composting instead breaks down food into a rich material that enhances soil and makes it fertile and fruitful. It’s a beautiful thing.

Green Gorilla is one of the Auckland’s leading compostable waste collection services. All the food and compostable waste that we collect is taken to a commercial compost facility in Tuakau.

Here, it is shredded and blended with other compostable waste then laid out into air-assisted windrows, allowing a constant flow of oxygen to pass through the material.

COMPOSTING PROCESS

  • The first phase of composting is called a thermophilic breakdown which means the waste material sits at 70°C. At this temperature, viruses and bacteria are killed and tough substances like polylactic acids and wood chip are broken down.
  • The heat is produced and maintained by aerobic bacteria working to break down the waste. That’s why the constant flow of oxygen is necessary.
  • The product is then filtered to remove any material larger than 5mm.

The high-quality compost is now ready to be used on the orchards and farms in the Pukekohe and Bombay regions.

It’s the perfect example of the circular economy and we’re proud to play our part in it.

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