An easy method to turn your food scraps and garden waste into a nutrient-rich resource.
Hot Composting is an easy way to turn your food scraps and garden waste into a nutrient-rich compost you can use to grow your own veggies. Read on to get all the detailed instructions on how you can start your own hot composting at home!
Hot composting is when you layer together carbon and nitrogen materials (food scraps, grass clippings, manure, straw, leaves, wood chips etc) into a large pile all in one go. Add water as you go and hey presto, your compost should be steaming hot within a few days.
Cover it to keep moisture in, turn it when it starts to cool and within six to nine months you should have glorious compost.
Out of sight is out of mind, so the best place is somewhere close to the hub of the garden. A hot compost heap can be free-standing, or you can build a structure out of wooden pallets, tin, untreated timber or straw bales. A plastic compost bin can work if you keep the moisture levels up by watering frequently.
You need enough materials to make a pile at least one metre high, one metre wide and one metre deep. Stockpile the materials until you have enough. You’ll need a balance of carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich materials:
It’s just like making a lasagna!
Alternate layers of greens with browns, sprinkling water between each layer.
A 10 cm layer of straw could be followed by a 10 cm layer of food scraps, followed by a 10 cm layer of shredded newspaper, followed by 10cm layer of grass clippings and so on.
Don’t forget the water, every layer should be damp like a wrung-out dishcloth.
Cover once built to the magic one-metre-cube dimensions, and cover the heap with some old carpet or black plastic.
The more you turn it, the quicker you’ll make compost. How often comes down to your time and enthusiasm? Turn it at least once after the heap begins to cool down, anywhere from two to eight weeks. This really mixes the cake and encourages the heap to reheat. Your compost is ready when you can’t recognise any of the original ingredients (usually six to nine months). You should have a brownish-black, rich, crumbly, soil-like substance to use on your garden.
All animal manures are nitrogen (greens) and are great added to the compost heap with a balancing layer of browns. Chicken manure has the most nitrogen, followed by pig, cow, alpaca and horse. Try to avoid manure from recently drenched animals.
As a heap matures, compost worms are a fantastic part of speeding things up. Once added to a three-bay system, they will multiply and move between heaps.
Theoretically, you can put all your weeds, seeds included, into a well-managed hot compost heap. I tend on the ‘just in case’ side with weeds that have seed heads or flowers, or which are just downright nasty (like couch). Chuck them in a bucket of water instead, let them rot down and you have a weed tea. Dilute four to one and feed your plants.
Where can I store the bucket?
When you’re filling the bucket, have it close at hand. Under the sink, at the back door or in the garage. Make it easy for yourself. When the bucket is full, leave it in a warm place. Laundry room/airing cupboard/north facing outside the house.
Help, nothing’s happening!
Check moisture levels to see if your heap is too dry. Add water, especially around the edges. Make sure the heap is covered to keep moisture in and to lock in more heat..
My heap stinks!
A smelly ammonia-like odour means you have too much nitrogen (green). Re-turn the heap adding more carbon (eg straw, paper or wood chips) as you go.
Everything seems right but it’s not heating up
Make up a nitrogen-rich slurry (eg a quarter bucket of manure mixed and filled to the top with water) and pour it over the heap a few times over a few days to fire it up. Pee is also a fantastic compost activator!
Aaargh! I’ve got rats and mice in my heap.
Rats can be attracted by your heap, no matter what you put in it or leave out. A cat or traps are the way forward here.
Bugs and flies – yuk
These critters are part of the decomposing process. To deal with an attack of tiny vinegar flies, fork over the top 30-50 cm layer, add some lime and cover well.
Whether you are just starting on your composting journey or you want to improve your current composting set up, our Composting Guides will give you the knowledge to feel confident to take your composting to the next level and divert organic waste from landfill.
Kitchen scraps and garden waste make up a third of household waste. Putting them in the landfill can be harmful as organic waste releases methane, a climate change gas. The Dr Compost project helps people in the Queenstown Lakes district to reduce their waste and feed their soil by composting at home. Dr Compost is funded by Queenstown Lakes District Council and delivered by Wastebusters.
This year our amazing Wastebusters whānau has been busy keeping everything we can out of landfill and supporting resourcefulness in our community while also working on bringing our dream of Wastebusters 2.0 into reality.
We were humbled and absolutely stoked to take home the Wānaka Chamber of Commerce Business Awards Supreme Business Award, along with the Community Contribution and Business Sustainability awards. This success was a powerful recognition of the dedicated mahi of our entire team, giving us huge confidence for the ambitious journey ahead.
We welcomed Aviette Musin on a fixed-term contract as our new Programme Manager for Wastebusters 2.0. Her expertise provided the dedicated, focused capacity needed to accelerate progress on this strategic goal.
Funding was secured through Queenstown Lakes Community Composting Project for the Compost Collect pilot, a joint venture with our neighbours Wānaka Greenwaste that will turn commercial food scraps into valuable compost, launching in 2026. We also intensified our focus on Construction and Demolition (C&D) materials, trialling diversion methodology and securing initial partnerships to divert waste from landfill. With our current site so space-constrained, we are extremely limited in the C&D materials which can be accepted for reuse, but this work will lay the groundwork for future diversion on a bigger site.
We made a compelling case to the Council for the necessary land expansion for Wastebusters 2.0 and prepared for the MfE Waste Minimisation Fund application process to support our expansion plans.
A continued focus for us this year has been on strengthening the Wastebusters whānau and ensuring we are equipped not just for the daily challenges, but for future growth. We continued to be a Living Wage employer, reflecting our commitment to the well-being and value of our staff. Feedback from the team via staff survey results highlighted strong morale and resilience within our workplace culture with 89% saying they enjoy working at Wastebusters and 93% feeling cared for by their manager.
The district’s rapid growth brings challenges as well as opportunities, particularly the Ballantyne Road/Riverbank Road roadworks which demanded flexibility and good humour from our team and customers throughout 2024. Despite the road cones, ongoing community support ensured our Reuse Shop continued to be a first choice destination for both locals and visitors. Improved donation flows and adding new changing rooms has made the shop operation smoother and more efficient for everyone.
Wastebusters’ partnership with events continues to go from strength to strength: including the trial of a food scraps collection from vendors. And our Recycle team did the huge job of relabeling all our events recycling bins to align with national recycling colours, making it easier for event-goers to know what to do. Wastebusters recycling trucks continue to be a much-loved presence in town servicing our 408 business customers, with the team doing a great job of keeping our aging fleet serviceable, in line with our kaupapa of keeping resources in use for as long as possible.
Our Reduce team has continued to deliver exceptional impact, with more than 11,000 people engaged in person through our education and engagement in the community. The Resourceful Communities programme inspires our community to take action and builds the knowledge and know how to engage in areas like repair, low waste living and textile waste diversion. It is proudly supported by QLDC’s zero waste district’s programme which recognises the impact of community connection for zero waste action.
We were stoked to join Environment Hubs Aotearoa, and we look forward to collaborating with this network and amplifying our collective impact on environmental action and resourcefulness across Aotearoa.
We worked with an impact consultant to implement an evaluation framework and behaviour change model to better plan, deliver and measure our impact, and have begun rolling out our learnings across all our programmes.
It was a busy year in advocacy, starting with participation in QLDC’s Waste Management and Minimisation Plan process. We appreciated QLDC’s approach in bringing Wastebusters and other stakeholders in early in the process, which has resulted in a constructive plan for the next six years. Wastebusters has also made submissions on national and local level, including The Right to Repair Bill, the Container Return Scheme and the publicly notified resource consent for McDonald’s in Wānaka.
Ultimately, this year has been about delivering impact while building the foundations for a much larger and even more impactful operation, securing Wastebusters’ future for our community. The heart of our work remains resource recovery and community engagement, and we enter the next 25 years of zero waste leadership with great confidence, welcome community support and an unwavering focus.
Gina Dempster
General Manager
November 2025
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