For Auckland Council
ēkotrace · Site Materials Tracker
Per-site tracking of soils, spoils and C&D waste — for Auckland Council's sites and maintenance works
Following our meeting on 12 May 2026, this is a focused proposal for a three-month pilot in which Auckland Council uses the ēkotrace platform to track construction-and-demolition waste across a small portfolio of live sites — with JJ's Waste & Recycling NZ as the collection and transport partner.
Executive summary
The pitch in 60 seconds
Auckland sends roughly 40% of its landfilled mass from construction and demolition. Soils and spoils dominate that flow. Council currently has no operational way to see, in real time, what was actually moved off any given site — whether that site is a new build, a demolition, an infrastructure renewal, or routine maintenance and depot works.
The ēkotrace Site Materials Tracker (SMT) closes that gap. It captures every load at the gate (mass, material, site, carrier), classifies it against the site's Waste Management Plan or its baseline assumption, and produces a hash-chained, audit-ready Site Materials Statement at close-out — using the NZ Waste Strategy 2023 hierarchy and MfE 2025 emission factors as its evidence basis.
The pilot lets Council see, on day one, the same dashboard their council asset officers, the maintenance teams, the sustainability team and the contractor see. JJ's Waste handles the physical flow; ēkotrace handles the proof.
The problem
Why this matters now
The proposal
What SMT covers — and what it doesn't
SMT is deliberately scoped to the operational evidence Council needs at the site level — whether that site is a new build, a demolition, an infrastructure renewal, or maintenance / depot works: what materials moved, where they went, and how that compares to the planned baseline. It is not a sustainability rating, not a certification, and not a substitute for any third-party scheme that a major project may separately choose to pursue.
| Topic | In SMT? | How ēkotrace covers it |
|---|---|---|
| Materials & diversion tracking | Yes — primary | Per-load gate capture, waste hierarchy split, Base Case vs Actual |
| Carbon & levy outcomes | Yes — secondary | Per-batch CO₂e using NZ MfE 2025 emission factors; NZ Waste Disposal Levy avoided |
| Soil quality & contamination | Partial | Flagged via manifest QC; specialist testing remains with the site owner / principal contractor |
| Sustainable procurement / governance | No | Out of scope — sits with Council's procurement function |
| Heritage / workforce / social outcomes | No | Out of scope |
| Project options assessment / business case | No | Out of scope — sits with project planners |
Operational partner
Why JJ's Waste & Recycling NZ
Commercial structure: JJ's retains all collection & transport revenue. ēkotrace charges Council a flat platform subscription for the pilot period. No revenue-share, no margin friction with JJ's existing contracts.
Pilot scope
A 90-day, 5-site trial
Commercials
Pilot pricing
Total pilot cost: NZ$18.5k. Indicative payback for Council comes from the levy avoidance alone: every 1,000 t diverted above each site's Waste Management Plan baseline = NZ$75k of levy not paid by the principal contractors. Five sites averaging 8,000 t each at +15 percentage-points above base case = ~6,000 t diverted = NZ$450k of levy avoided across the trial cohort.
Indicative figure. Actual diversion verified by ēkotrace gate data; levy savings accrue to the contractors / disposers per the standard NZ Waste Disposal Levy rules.
See it now
Working software, today
The dashboard, digital twin and Materials Statement layout you'll use during the pilot already exist. They run today on the same ēkotrace platform that powers our textiles work with The Warehouse Group's "Good Drop" take-back scheme — same code path, different feedstock. You can see them inside ēkotrace right now:
Demo data labelled clearly throughout. Real sites arrive once the pilot is signed.
Where SMT sits
Reference frameworks
- ▸NZ Waste Strategy 2023 · the waste hierarchy (Avoid → Dispose) baked into the SMT dashboard.
- ▸NZ Waste Disposal Levy · 2026 managed-fill rate NZ$75/t referenced in every diversion calculation.
- ▸NZ Building Performance Waste Management Plan rules (2025/26) · SMT is the operational layer that closes those plans out at site level (and provides equivalent evidence for maintenance / depot work outside the formal plan).
- ▸MfE 2025 Waste emission factors · used directly for all per-batch CO₂e figures.
- ▸EU ESPR / Digital Product Passport · same hash-chain primary-data architecture used by ēkotrace for textiles, which future-proofs export-facing infrastructure work.
Other industry frameworks exist for major infrastructure projects (e.g. the Infrastructure Sustainability Council's IS Rating Scheme). SMT is independent of those products and does not seek to replicate, replace, or compete with them — it sits alongside, focused on the operational gap at the site / load level.
Decision
What we'd need from Council to start
- Nominate 5 live sites across a mix of build types.
- Designate a single point of contact in the Waste Solutions team for the 90-day window.
- Issue a short letter of support to JJ's Waste so they can flag affected sites in their dispatch system.
- Sign the pilot service agreement (~3 pages, drafted by ēkot) covering scope, IP, data privacy and the 90-day exit clause.
We can be live within 14 days of signature. The first Site Materials Statement would close out around day 90.