Students at Papakura Intermediate School have received 5,000 litres of compost to use for their maara kai project.
The load, which was transported in a 16-wheeler truck yesterday, is part of Auckland Council's food scraps program.
Early this year the council added small food scrap wheelie bins to households in Papakura. The food scraps were then taken to a facility to be processed into compost, says councilor Alf Filipaina.
"The end result is, the first school in the south that has now turned what they collected into compost," he says.
"This is working, it's coming back into the ground and we haven't got 90,000 tonnes of food waste in Tāmaki Makaurau going into the tip. It's been recycled, regenerated for our community."
Another spokesperson from the council said that "For Māori, there is a depth of knowledge of Papatūānuku and her tamariki, Haumiatiketike and Rongomatane. Composting is a cyclical and holistic approach to addressing current-day waste issues."
“The new service makes it easy for people to return to this principle and put their para kai back into the life-cycle of the earth,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The council says the service will expand to all urban areas of the Auckland region by 2020 on the way towards their goal of having zero waste going to landfill by 2040.