Sandra Hazlehurst: Time to clean up our own backyard

Sandra Hazlehurst

As acting mayor I have been concerned at what is happening to our environment at a global, national and local level.

The use of plastic is causing a huge number of environmental problems across the world. Scientists are telling us that by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than there are fish. Plastic is slowly but surely destroying our fish stocks and the quality of our seawater.

Recently China announced that it no longer wants to be the world's rubbish dump, declaring it will ban the import of 24 kinds of waste including plastics, metals and other materials by the end of the year. Currently New Zealand companies send our plastic to China to be recycled. We will need to come up with innovative solutions to address how we can recycle our waste plastic.

Last year 84,000 tonnes of waste was buried in landfills; making up most of the visual pollution are plastic bags that simply blow out of the landfill and deface the surrounding environment, despite the best efforts of our staff work to contain them.

To solve this problem we need to stop and think about what each of us can do and what our collective approach should be:

Individually - What can we do?

Arrive at the supermarket with a container to put your purchases in. Boomerang bags are a wonderful new addition to what is available for recycling food bags. Free convenient, funky, fabric bags are being given out when you buy your food. This is a great community initiative.

We need to put pressure on the manufacturers, demanding that they supply us with products that are free of plastic, and reinforcing that consumer pressure by purchasing only those products that are free of plastic.

Commercially

Two of our major supermarkets, Countdown and New World, have taken a lead. Both are phasing out single use plastic carrier bags in stores and online services by the end of 2018. Countdown has stated it alone will remove a staggering 350 million single use carrier bags from New Zealand each year. And this is just one New Zealand supermarket chain. It is mind-boggling to think what the numbers might be on an international scale.

This type of commitment needs to be made by all retailers not just those who supply food products. As consumers, we need to let our local retail businesses know we do not want them to use plastic bags.

We have seen a huge increase in people taking responsibility for the recycling of their own waste. And your council is taking action too. Earlier this year the council signed a submission to the Government, along with most of the country's mayors, demanding a charge for plastic bags. The money from this charge could go to the "Keep NZ Clean and Green Trust" to be spent directly on our environment.

Hastings and Napier Councils are working together through a "Waste Futures Programme" and we are undertaking a full review of our waste management. We have commenced consulting with our community about different ways to collect rubbish, recycle and deal with green waste collected from our city households.

Options may include the removal of council orange bags, replacing them with different bins or containers to make it easier for residents to sort their recycling, an initiative aimed at removing another source of plastic bags from our environment. Our council has created, and continues to grow a network of rural recycling sites, each site is an overwhelming success.

We all need to continually put pressure on the Government to provide the funding and the regulations to remove single use plastic bags from the New Zealand economy.

Nationally, there is a need to launch, and fund, a massive "clean up New Zealand" campaign. New Zealand is both small enough and innovative enough to lead the world by creating a benchmark around what "Clean and Green NZ" really means.

It is our collective responsibility to clean up our environment, each and every one of us working together to make a world of difference, starting with our own backyard.

Sandra Hazlehurst is the Acting Mayor of Hastings and is a candidate in the Hastings mayoral byelection. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz