When Marian Shore saw a need, she worked to fill it. Now she is stepping down from her role as manager of the Waitaki Resource Recovery Trust. North Otago reporter Rebecca Ryan talks to her about her efforts to bring a change in the way Oamaru residents view their rubbish.
In 2001, Marian Shore and her two children moved from Tauranga to Oamaru for a change in lifestyle.
On arrival, she discovered the town had no recycling or composting of its green waste.
"I was particularly concerned about organic matter going into landfill, because of its potential to create toxic leachate,'' Mrs Shore said.
By 2003 she had established the Waitaki Resource Recovery Park in Chelmer St, at the former Oamaru borough council works department yard.
What started as a one-day-a-week venture with Mrs Shore and two others is now a seven-day-a week operation employing 27 paid staff and up to 15 volunteers at any one time.
Not only does the park recycle and process waste into saleable products, it has a successful "Get Sorted'' resale shop and offers programmes for young people and those at risk; it is actively involved with school work experience, restorative justice, youth justice, police diversion and other programmes.
That was one of Mrs Shore's aims from the beginning.
After receiving a grant from Zerowaste New Zealand, she was able to travel around New Zealand, looking at how other centres were recycling, and she knew the Oamaru park had the ability to help people.
From there, she could see that the best model to create the most social benefit was a community-driven, council-supported facility.
A lot of places were using vulnerable people, offering them somewhere to get a foot in the door, to get started and to be mentored.
"What we're really doing is resource recovery of people. We just happen to be using the waste stream,'' she said.
That had been one of the most rewarding aspects of the job - mentoring some of the vulnerable people, mainly youth, and watching them develop and "blossom'' into fully contributing members of the community.
The park was now recognised nationally to be a leading social enterprise.
She was always confident the project would succeed, even though many Oamaru people probably had their doubts, she said.
The massive shift in attitude in the town was demonstrated in 2007-08, when a waste management plan produced by the council suggested the trust and its resource recovery park might no longer be needed, and be replaced by multinationals.
The council received about 2000 submissions supporting the trust, cars in town sported bumper stickers urging the retention of the park and about 400 people marched to the council's offices in protest.
The "Get Sorted'' resale shop had become a community hub and something of a social centre.
"Everybody has waste and, generally, everybody inherently wanted to do the best thing with it.''
The community-owned and operated business last year was able to recycle 3500 tonnes of waste, about 87% of what came in the gate.
Mrs Shore started her working life as a computer programmer, before opening a therapeutic massage business, other retail stores and an organic orchard.
She had always had an interest in sustainability issues.
"I guess, my driver really was not so much about the recycling but if people started thinking about what they were throwing out, they might think about what they were buying.''
She hoped the park had made people look at what they were recycling, what they were able to recycle and what they were throwing away, and connect them to the embedded energy and impacts of those items.
She was "stoked'' and "really, really pleased'' that Dave Clare, the park's business manager, would be taking over when she left.
"He's been here for four years so he knows the business. He's got some really great skills that he'll bring.''
Mrs Shore has also made a real impact in the Waitaki community outside of the park.
She is a member of the Safer Waitaki management committee, was one of the founding developers and the first chairwoman of the Waitaki Community Gardens Trust, and was instrumental in the development of the Sustainable Skills Summer School.
Of her next venture, Mediation Waitaki, she said she was looking forward to change.
"I really enjoy mediation. I've been doing quite a lot and I think I've always had an interest in alternative dispute resolution.''
She is also qualified in family dispute resolution and teaching parenting through separation, and will remain working with vulnerable people, as she plans to become more involved in the district's Restorative Justice programme.
"My real interest now is trying to prevent family violence and breaking the family violence cycle,'' she said.
"That includes empowering youth and that is why I still intend to be working with the Resource Recovery Park.''
