After months of planning, with a new operations team on board and armed with everything Wellington Waste Managers was, Nonstop Solutions was ready to go.
Nonstop Solutions was soft-launched to our community over the next couple of months, and we launched to the public in October. Over this period, things with the events industry were still a little touch and go, but it was looking bright for summer. We began working out of this very space, we were ready to employ a new army of casual event staff with a busy season ahead, everything was a go!
Our first official event as Nonstop Solutions was Tora Bombora on the beautiful Tora Coast in the Wairarapa. This went off with a bang! There was a cans-only policy onsite, and over the weekend we filled a trailer and kept the site tidy, achieving a 92.5% resource recovery rate. The excitement was short-lived, however. We left the reception free grounds after a weekend of dancing and diverting to discover that Aotearoa was to move to the red traffic light setting immediately, which meant no large events.
This was a huge blow.
We returned to Wellington, put our heads down, and pulled our attention to some other projects including completing an exciting research project with the WCC, launching our business waste audits, advocacy, educational content and solidifying our processes for when we returned to the green (or orange) light.
Over the next few months we threw our energy into many different things hoping to land on something which would keep us afloat.
(To be honest, thank you NZ COVID support fund for that.)
After all this, we realised for now our strength lies in events and we needed to pull our focus back to this. During this time however, we were able to attend The Performance Arcade, one of the few events that were able to go ahead under the red light.
So take three - not to jinx anything - but it looks like we are FINALLY good to go! We got our team back onto an event site in June for Matariki on the Wellington Waterfront where we were stoked to trial a reuse zone. Armed with Reusabowls, Again Again cups and crockery thanks to the Tip Shop, we set up camp in Tuatua Cafe. Together with Takeaway Throwaways we offered reusable serviceware to attendees all along the Frank Kitts park, a zone full of food trucks for the Matariki Fireworks.
There is a lot of work to do to see reuse fully implemented at all events, but we have big plans in this area and the uptake and feedback has encouraged us greatly! So Watch this space!
Following on from Matariki we attended Love Local in Porirua. Here it was fantastic to show some of the local Sea Scout volunteers what we do to recover resources from landfill… and this weekend we will be at Beervana! Our events calendar is filling back up with returning clients, postponed events AND lots of new events, we could not be happier.
Events aside, I was also honoured to be named a finalist in the Impact Awards recently for Nonstop Solutions - it was incredible to be recognised in this capacity in just our first year!
Nonstop, from its roots at Newtown Festival, has always been about getting incredible people together to pull off extraordinary things. So thank you to everyone who has been involved and supported us over the years.
And that brings us to today! We can’t wait to see what comes next for Nonstop Solutions, and we could not ask for a better community to have alongside us.
