Island Bay Festival | 74% Recovery
Building a More Circular Waste System at Island Bay Festival
Seven years of collaboration, resource recovery and reuse are helping one of Wellington’s community festivals reduce single-use waste and build towards a more circular event.
Location: Wellington
Event type: Street festival
Event duration: 1 day
Island Bay Festival is an annual summer street festival held at Shorland Park, celebrating the community, talent and diversity of Wellington’s South Coast.
Nonstop Solutions has worked alongside Island Bay Festival since 2019, progressively strengthening the event’s waste management and reuse systems. Over the past three years, reuse has become an increasingly important part of the system, culminating in full-system reuse with FillGood in 2025.
In 2026, Nonstop managed 226.9 kg of audited waste, recovering 167.9 kg from landfill and achieving a 74% resource recovery rate.
Key outcomes included:
74% resource recovery rate
167.9 kg recovered from landfill
Reuse delivered across 16 participating vendors
6 resource recovery stations
10,000+ attendees
Minimal litter across the festival site
Island Bay Festival combines the complexity of a busy public street festival with an ambitious long-term goal to reduce single-use waste.
In 2026, funding constraints meant the reuse system could cover only 16 vendors which was approximately half the participation of 2025. This resulted in more single-use packaging entering the waste system and provides a useful demonstration of the role reuse plays in reducing waste at source.
The system also needed to manage waste generated by more than 10,000 attendees across food vendor areas, the main street and Shorland Park while maintaining a clean public environment.
The System We Implemented
Event Waste Planning
Nonstop worked with the Island Bay Festival team ahead of the event to understand the site layout, attendee movement and operational requirements.
This informed a waste management plan designed around practical bin placement, resource recovery and smooth on-site delivery.
Resource Recovery Stations
Six resource recovery stations were positioned throughout the festival, separating:
Compost
Recycling
Landfill
Stations were located around food vendors, along the main street and within Shorland Park, with coloured bin hoods helping attendees identify the correct waste stream. Volunteers also supported some of the busiest stations with waste education for the public.
Reuse with FillGood
Reuse remained an important part of the Island Bay Festival waste system in 2026.
Nonstop supplied participating vendors with reusable stock, managed collection through return bins and transported used items to the main wash hub after the event.
Vendor familiarity with the system has also improved over time, reducing friction and making reuse easier to integrate into event operations.
On-Site Collection & Hand Sorting
Throughout the festival, Nonstop managed bin servicing, waste collection and litter control.
Collected materials were returned to the Resource Recovery HQ for consolidation, and all event waste was hand-sorted on the day to maximise the amount recovered from landfill.
Key Findings
Waste Outcomes by System
Compost represented the largest recovery pathway at Island Bay Festival, accounting for almost half of all audited material.
Across composting, recycling and specialist recovery streams, 167.9 kg of resources were recovered from landfill, resulting in a 74% resource recovery rate.
The detailed audit shows that compostable packaging and food scraps alone accounted for 110.3 kg, demonstrating the importance of both appropriate food-service packaging and effective organics recovery at food-focused events.
Why Reuse Matters
Funding constraints reduced reuse participation to approximately half of the previous year's level.
With fewer vendors participating, more single-use material entered the waste system. Total generated waste increased by 65.3 kg, including approximately 20.6 kg more landfill.
The comparison reinforces an important principle of circular event management: the strongest waste outcome is often preventing material from becoming waste in the first place.
Attendee & Vendor Engagement
The Island Bay community played an active role in supporting the system.
Attendees regularly engaged with Nonstop staff for help sorting materials into the correct streams, while vendors were familiar with the waste and reuse systems and generally managed their own waste responsibly.
Despite windy conditions and more than 10,000 attendees, litter remained minimal, with approximately one 240L bag collected across the event and a post-event litter sweep taking around 30 minutes.
Material Insights
The audit provides a particularly useful picture of what was entering the system.
The largest individual streams were:
Compostable packaging — 75.2 kg
Landfill — 59 kg
Food scraps — 34.1 kg
PLA packaging — 23.8 kg
Co-mingled recycling — 18 kg
The most common recovered materials found during hand sorting were compostable packaging, PLA packaging and food scraps.
Where Landfill Remained
Remaining landfill included dirty soft plastics, contaminated plastics, unlabelled containers, some PLA-like food trays, gas canisters, wrappers and straws.
The audit identified further opportunities for vendors to replace difficult-to-recover materials with compostable or recyclable alternatives.
Turning Waste Into Community Impact
Aluminium cans recovered from Island Bay Festival were donated to the Cans for Kai initiative, supporting the Kai Ika Project.
Results:
6 kg aluminium cans recovered
2.5 family meals supported
Approximately 54 kg CO₂e avoided
Looking Ahead
The strongest opportunity identified for Island Bay Festival is clear: returning to full festival-wide reuse.
The 2026 results demonstrate that reuse does more than change where materials are sent after an event. It reduces the amount of material entering the waste system altogether. Unfortunately for community events, they are often reliant on funding to support their sustainability initiatives and Island Bay festival is no different. In the future we hope to see more support put behind community events to make the more sustainable choice.
With stronger visual waste communications already improving attendee awareness, restoring full reuse across vendors in 2027 would support Island Bay Festival's continued journey towards a more circular, lower-waste event.
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