Larger landfill levy and Aucklanders' laziness in sights of Govt recycling taskforce

Sunday, 3 June 2018

A lack of recycling facilities means NZ must continue to send plastics and other recyclables overseas

New Zealanders could pay a $140 per tonne tax to dump waste at all landfills across the country as piles of plastic mount.

Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage said increasing the waste levy from $10 per tonne and applying it to all landfills, not just 10 per cent of them, would help respond to China's refusal to process our plastic rubbish.

China banned imports of all contaminated plastic waste last year in a move dubbed the 'National Sword'. It came into effect in January.

Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage has set up a taskforce to respond to China's ban on accepting our plastic waste.

Sage said piles of recycling had mounted at small sorting stations. Larger recycling sorting companies had found capacity in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia to export New Zealanders' plastic waste to.

**READ MORE:

Rubbish is mounting at small landfills across the country after China stopped accepting New Zealanders' plastic in January.

* Recycling industry scrambles to solve our dirty waste secret

* China has stopped taking our recycling and waste. Here's where it's ending up**

Last year 41 million kilograms of New Zealanders' plastic rubbish was sent overseas to be processed.

Last year New Zealand recycling companies sent 41 million kilograms of plastic waste offshore to be processed, according to Statistics New Zealand export data. More than 7 million kgs went to China.

Australia-based Visy Recycling, Reclaim, Green Gorilla, EnviroWaste and Waste Management are the major operators that collect and sort New Zealanders' waste.

Aucklanders not separating their waste is a problem, according to associate environment minister Eugenie Sage.

A Stuff investigation into New Zealand's recycling industry earlier this year, revealed New Zealand recycling companies were bartering for space at processing facilities in other Asian countries following China's move.

Sage had set up a taskforce within the Ministry for the Environment to tackle the growing problem caused by the National Sword, she announced on Friday.

'MfE has been working with councils, businesses, recyclers and processors and others to develop some short term solutions to the fact that we no longer have that market in China. I'm expecting advice back from them. I've also asked the waste advisory board for some advice on that as well.'

The taskforce could force Aucklanders to separate their recyclable waste.

The co-mingling of waste like glass, paper and plastic was what led China to stop accepting it, Sage said.

'Where you have separation at source, it makes the whole recycling process much better. We've got to shift to that to enable us to deal with the issues from the national sword.'

Auckland was 'a problem,' because it did not separate its waste and did not have an organic collection.

The waste levy, charged at landfills, made up the Waste Minimisation Fund. It collected about $13 million annually.

Half of the money was granted to businesses bettering waste management, and the other half to local government to fund schemes that minimised or helped process waste in their area.

Sage said councils, like Auckland's, could be forced to enact the separation of recyclable waste.

'If councils [are] going to access the money under the fund to assist with their waste minimisation, they are going to have to satisfy some more criteria and separation may well be one of those.'

However, mandating that was not a priority, she said. 'The waste levy, manage product stewardship schemes, dealing with single-use plastic bags, are first in the queue.'