Environment committee decision a victory for exporters of plastic waste

Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Auckland lawyer Lydia Chai tells Parliament's Environment Select Committee in June why politicians should ban exports of plastic to developing countries.

Lawyer turned environmental activist Lydia Chai has convinced MPs it’s time to end the unlicenced export of polluting plastic waste for recycling in corruption-ridden countries.

But Chai, a lawyer at Simpson Grierson, is disappointed Parliament’s environment committee did not support her call for a complete ban on plastic waste exports to developing countries.

Instead, the committee, chaired by Green Party MP Eugenie Sage, recommended the Government introduce better monitoring of plastic waste exports.

“That sounds a lot like box-ticking to me. The plastic still leaves our shores. Even if you send it to a processor in Malaysia that you trust, the sheer amounts that are getting processed, is just really disheartening,” Chai said.

There was a high level of leeching of microplastic into the environment around recycling facilities, even when they were state-of-the-art, she said.

New Zealand creates much more plastic waste than it can deal with onshore, which has led to much ending up in landfills, or being exported, with about 98,000 tonnes exported from 2019 to mid-2021.

There is a national plastics strategy to transition the country to a “circular economy”. However, it will be three to five years before the waste sector will be properly regulated, the committee said in its report on Chai’s petition.

Plastic is causing a massive global pollution, and some believe future generations may dub ours ‘The Plastic Age’ because long after we are gone, the plastic we made will remain.

Chai petitioned Parliament after discovering the damage being done to the environment, and human health in Malaysia, the country of her birth, from plastic imports, including their illegal dumping and burning.

Just under half of all New Zealand plastic waste was exported to Malaysia and Thailand, the committee said.

Chai said the committee’s decision not to recommend an export ban was a victory for plastic waste producers and exporters.

PlasticsNZ, which represents companies in the plastic industry, told the committee there was not enough recycling capacity in New Zealand, and without the option to send plastic waste to “environmentally-sound international facilities”, the plastic would end up in landfill.

It also claimed exports of high-grade plastic waste (recycling categories 1, 2, and 5) helped make recycling plants in places like Malaysia economically viable.

It even expressed concern for impoverished “waste-pickers” in developing countries who scrape a living sorting plastics.

MPs on the committee challenged this apparent concern.

“We asked PlasticsNZ whether it believes it is ethical to export plastic waste to a country with lower environmental and safety standards than New Zealand, given the evidence that plastic is not being processed correctly,” the committee said in its report.

“PlasticsNZ told us that while more plastic processing needs to be done onshore, the unintended social and economic consequences of reduced exports for developing countries also need to be considered,” it said.

Chai told the committee she did not accept the argument that the waste trade brought prosperity and employment to developing countries, as it ignored the health and environment of communities affected by the trade.

Petitioner Lydia Chai says the seas of South-east Asia were the most plastic-polluted in the world.

The export of high-grade plastic waste is licenced, but Chai had no confidence in the audit schemes that exporting companies relied on to show they were selling plastic waste to buyers who would recycle it responsibly, instead of dumping, or burning it.

Much of the plastic waste exported was on-sold through brokers, Chai said.

Corruption was a big problem, Chai said, and developing countries did not have the resources to regulate the waste industry and enforce environmental laws.

Chai had hoped a complete ban on plastic waste exports, except to developing countries, would put such pressure on the use of plastic that it would force change.

Australia banned plastics exports to developing countries, but has had to temporarily relax that, while onshore recycling facilities are developed.

The private companies in the Waste and Recycling Industry Forum, including EnviroNZ and Green Gorilla, handle about 85% of recycling in New Zealand.

The forum told the committee the industry had started to expand its onshore reprocessing capabilities, and with the increased waste levy the industry would have more funds to support new infrastructure being built.

New Zealand is part of international negotiations on a global plastics treaty, which is expected to be concluded next year.