Fletcher Building to burn plastics to cut its cement carbon footprint

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Fletcher Building intends to start burning “hard-to-recycle” plastics to generate energy to make cement, a move it says aids waste diversion for the country - but plastics campaigners are horrifed, saying it would be an incentive to keep generating waste.

At its Golden Bay cement factory, Fletchers has been gradually shifting away from burning coal in a bid to reduce the climate emissions intensity of its concrete.

In 2003, it started using wood pellets to replace some of the coal it burned. In 2010, it started burning construction waste. In 2023, it started burning shredded end-of-life tyres.

This year it would start a “front-end firing project” to introduce hard-to-recycle plastic waste and wood into its fuel mix.

The company is billing the plan as a win-win on climate and waste, saying Fletchers was playing a “significant role in waste diversion for New Zealand”.

But plastics and circular economy expert Hannah Blumhardt said burning hard-to-use plastics legitimised their continued production, which was contributing to the bigger picture of global plastics pollution, oil extraction and climate-changing emissions.

She said plastics campaigners had heard rumours of a plan to burn hard-to-recycle plastics at scale, but had not heard who was planning on doing it.

She said the “sells” for such projects were always narrowly focused and ignored the bigger picture, which was recognised in places like England and Scotland which had banned new waste-burning plants.

“You create an incentive to keep generating waste. You have a ‘magical’ solution to deal with it,” she said.

“But you need to feed the beast”, she said. “It stops us from thinking about the alternatives.”

The alternative was to drastically cut plastic production and move to sustainable circular economics.

She said by 2060, production of plastic was forecast to triple to “unfathomable” levels.

Professor Trisia Farrelly from Massey University said burning plastic waste was “just a way to keep going with the escalating production of plastics”.

Negotiations continue in August on a global plastics treaty, but a group of oil producing countries are hindering progress.

Environmentalists have been fighting plans to establish plants to burn waste, including a proposed plant in Te Awamutu.

Global Contracting Solutions has applied to build a waste to energy plant in Racecourse Rd, Te Awamutu, with plans to incinerate almost 166,000 tonnes of waste and rubbish annually to generate steam to turn into electricity.

The more than $200 million project has been described by opponents as a “toxic incinerator” with rubbish being trucked in from outside the district to fuel its boilers.

Environmentalists are celebrating after a similar plan to establish an even larger plant in Waimate in Canterbury failed.

In a shareholder presentation on Tuesday, Fletchers said it aimed to be 100% coal-free by 2030.

It said wood pellets and shredded tyres had replaced 50% of its coal consumption, and burning hard-to-recycle plastic waste and wood would take that to between 70% and 80% of its coal substitution target.

It told shareholders: “Decarbonisation of cement is playing a key role in the NZ concrete industry achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Fletchers called for Government policy to support the continued manufacture of concrete in New Zealand.

It was competing with overseas concrete makers with higher carbon footprints, which could supply more concrete to New Zealand. There needed to be a tariff system to account for emissions for imports, it said.

“Significant investment in decarbonising local manufacturing is not viable without certainty,” it told shareholders.

It called for a “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism” in the medium-term.

Other projects Fletchers had in place included a “small-scale carbon capture pilot trial” at Golden Bay, and had ongoing trials to test and improve low-carbon readymix, precast and masonry cement.