NZ is 'very behind' the world in reducing plastic

Thursday, 4 July 2019

Single use plastic bags didn't have much of a life-span to begin with, but from Monday they won't have one at all.

The first step is always significant, but you need a second, third and more steps to really get somewhere.

Banning single-use supermarket plastic bags is a big leap forward in terms of ridding the country of millions more of them in future. But there are still plenty of old ones out there – lying soaked and muddied in the gutters, blowing about the beaches, trapped and flapping in trees.

There are also many other single-use plastic bags left untouched by the ban, which came into force on Monday – bags containing frozen peas or cotton balls or crackers, for example.

Single-use plastic bags are a thing of the past in New Zealand - but what plastic should be dealt with next?

And while supermarkets are no longer allowed to supply these plastic shopping bags at checkouts any more, they are quite happy to stock aisles with a choice of plastic bags you can buy.

**READ MORE:

Remix Plastic founder Anthea Madill is encouraged by the number of Christchurch people who attend her workshops on how to minimise their reliance on single-use plastic.

* Warmer homes, no plastic bags: A handy guide to all the new NZ law changes

* NZ plastic bag ban: The exemptions and the rules explained

A pile of plastic bottles and bags, with paper and cardboard, being compacted and baled up in New Plymouth (file photo).

* Recycling breakthrough as Environment Ministry works on drink container refund scheme

* Queensland ban kills off 900 million plastic bags in a year

Hannah Blumhardt and Liam Prince of The Rubbish Trip have travelled around New Zealand passing on tips about how to live waste-free. Here they are pictured at the Crows Nest in Timaru in March 2018.

* How New Zealand's attitude towards plastic bags compares to other countries

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

Recycling old plastic bags on the washing line.

Plastic-reduction advocates say supermarket bags deserved to be the first such product outlawed, for being a 'symbol of our throwaway society'.

However, they recognise a ban is a blunt instrument which can backfire by channelling people into other behaviours – such as buying those packaged plastic bags for the kitchen bin rather than using an old plastic supermarket bag.

Volunteers are still cleaning up rubbish strewn along West Coast beaches after an old landfill was undermined by floodwaters in the Fox River in March.

Plastic is ubiquitous. You are reading this on something made of, or that was wrapped in, plastic. These interviews were scrawled using a plastic pen, the story was written on a plastic keyboard and proofread on a plastic monitor.

It is hard to imagine a world without plastic. And yet there was one, just 60 years or so ago, before manufacturing costs fell and ushered in the era of mass production.

The sight of rubbish spread across pristine West Coast beaches after a historic dump was undermined by floodwaters in March has horrified many New Zealanders.

An increasingly staunch approach from global recycler China has thrown a spanner in the works of the strategies of many countries, including New Zealand, to send their plastic problems overseas and carry on with business as usual.

Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage discusses plans to ban single-use plastic bags. (Video first published in December 2018)

In the South Island, soft plastics - defined by the Christchurch City Council as anything you can 'scrunch in your hand' - are no longer being recycled, even though they can be. However, any clean, hard plastics – 'mixed plastics' – with the numbers 1 to 7* can be recycled.

However, in Auckland, with its economies of scale, those categories of plastics are still able to be recycled.

With supermarket plastic bags gone, attention turns to what should come next.

Hannah Blumhardt of zero-waste living organisation The Rubbish Trip says a refund scheme for returning plastic bottles and drink containers is now a 'no brainer'.

The Ministry of Environment said last month such a deposit-refund system would 'incentivise' recovering quality recyclables from waste.

Blumhardt, who is also spokeswoman for the Product Stewardship Council, says 90 per cent of local authorities support such a scheme.

'That would be easy. Then ideally we could develop a single-use plastic strategy involving – like the EU (European Union) directive – a set of measures covering a range of issues and we could consult on it all at once.'

New Zealand is in a good position to advance its recycling efforts, due to the 2008 Waste Minimisation Act, she says. But we have failed to grasp the nettle and the act has been largely under the radar for a long time.

'It's got all the regulatory powers needed for a world-leading strategy. There's been a groundswell of people pushing to use the act, but there's been ferocious industry lobbying for the act not to be used. So New Zealand is now very behind the rest of the world.

'If the act were to have been passed right now, everybody would be expecting more from the government and more accountability from the politicians, because the public now is so much more engaged.'

Christchurch's 'chief petitioner' for ridding us of single-use plastic bags, Megan Blakie, says a measure of that public engagement is the excitement she has heard from many about the ban.

'I was really excited too on Monday. It was really key to stop these bags and it shows that when we can come together we can make a big difference. The country needs to take a bow.

'The thing about the single-use plastic bags is they are a symbol of our throwaway society. It's so encouraging to hear people's awareness has been raised and they are starting to talk about issues of consumerism.

'The plastics industry is a multi-billion industry and their measure is to increase plastics production. I don't think they are necessarily going to want to deal with these issues unless consumers and councils and governments say, 'enough'.'

The appetite for sweeping change is clear in letters to The Press this week.

Papanui couple Jack and Jo Barrett said it wasn't good enough for people to 'talk about how it's all the little things that make a difference'.

'Why doesn't anybody ever talk about making big changes, and the overall positive impact big changes will have?'

In her letter, Linley Earnshaw of Merivale said while 'small steps' like banning supermarket plastic bags were achievable, 'the next step awaits'.

The founder of plastics recycling advocacy group Remix Plastic, Anthea Madill, says 'plastic free' is a worthy but very difficult goal.

'I try to use as little disposable anything as possible - plastics and paper as well. Our landfill bin is full maybe every six months.'

Madill, who runs workshops on how to reduce household reliance on single-use plastics, says there is still a lot to talk about in terms of what needs to be done and how.

'We are still figuring out what to do. The best thing we can do is reduce its use. In the workshops we show people they can make a difference.'

Diamond Harbour couple Jules and Kristian Morgan have been actively reducing plastic use for about five years.

Jules, the mother of Molly, 14, and Flynn, 10, says she has always been conscious of the amount of plastic in her household.

'It made me really aware of the amount I was using when we were able to recycle our soft plastics at supermarkets every week. Then we stopped being able to do that and it has to go in the red bin. There's always a couple of bags of bags sliding around in the boot of the car.

'Now when I go to the supermarket, I try not to buy anything with plastic. It's just thinking more about things, but it's time consuming. But I feel like I have to do the best for them (Molly and Flynn). They will pick me up on it if I don't.'

Christchurch City Council solid waste manager Ross Trotter says material from the yellow kerbside recycling bin goes to the automatic EcoSort, which processes about 25 tonnes of clean, hard, plastic containers and bottles an hour.

About 38,000 tonnes of recyclable material from Christchurch residents is processed annually.

When it comes to soft plastics there is 'no viable market' and the EcoSort cannot separate them, he says.

Packaging Council of New Zealand executive director Sharon Humphreys says too many people are 'wrapped up' in negativity over packaging.

The head of the organisation representing 68 big packaging companies says the debate needs to go wider than just banning items such as single-use plastic bags.

The eager adoption of the 'single use' phrase reflects a simplification of the issues, she says.

'Being sustainable is what people are wanting to talk about. But it's well enough established that recycling is not going to solve all our problems. There's still tremendous emphasis on being able to recycle.

'The reality is plastic bags have been easy to ban. But there's an awful lot of plastic that we quite clearly can't live without.

'We do need to be mindful about recycling and what the end-of-life looks like for packaging, but the end-of-life can't be the be-all and end-all.'

The packing industry is involved in research and development work to reduce plastic use and ensure as much can be recycled as possible, Humphreys says.

'Plastic is everywhere in our world. It's in aircraft parts, car parts. There's such a negative view against plastic, and there is no denying we have a plastic pollution problem - a problem with marine plastic pollution and, let's face it, a land plastic pollution problem too.

'So the next step? Well I don't think we should just look at bans as a first step, quite frankly. It is rather a skewed approach and it does have unintended consequences.

'We have banned certain plastic bags and just moved people into purchasing their plastic bags instead.

'There's more awareness of what we have to do. We can all contribute in terms of looking at our consumption and at buyers' behaviour.

'Take the humble cucumber. If you buy one and put it in your salad for tonight, you should be thinking, 'I don't need that wrapped up'. But if you go to the supermarket and buy it to chuck in the chilly-bin to take away for a week, then you need to think, 'if I don't buy it wrapped, chances are it'll be buggered'.'

Plastic wrapping is crucial for food safety and to minimise food waste, Humphreys says.

* An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that only plastic numbers 1 and 2 can be recycled in Christchurch.