Bucks to be made in zero waste

MATHEW DEARNALEY and SIMON COLLINS find that the philosophy of natural capitalism - a concept of valuing people and resources - has a practical job creation spin-off.

In Kaitaia, the townsfolk celebrated the closing of their landfill by rolling out white linen for an on-site banquet and the launch of a recycling base.

Ten years on, the Kaitaia Community Business and Environment Centre says it has turned the tide against senseless squandering of resources with a 66 per cent reduction in waste carted from the town to the Far North's only big remaining landfill, at Ahipara.

The centre has become a major employer in a district of high joblessness, paying about $36,000 a month to 20 or so staff, and hiring up to 100 people a year for contracts in a range of activities from forestry to running the town's public swimming pool.

Recycling supervisor Lillian Cassidy, a former Auckland truck driver who moved back to Kaitaia with her husband, at first thought that sifting through society's cast-offs would be "right at the bottom of the scale."

But she has since become an ardent advocate for recycling, taking pride in the service she is supplying to the community and environment.

Meanwhile, in Opotiki, the district council's commitment to a "zero waste" society struck a less convivial chord at first, despite promises of a better environment and jobs for the long-term unemployed.

"There were 150 people in a hall baying for our blood," recalls district engineer David Reece of the reaction 18 months ago to the withdrawal of council rubbish skips from four coastal communities.

But he no longer has to deal with complaints about horse entrails, car bodies and broken furniture being strewn around the bins, and says there is little evidence of illegal dumping.

The introduction of tipping fees backed by kerbside recycling in urban Opotiki has left the district with 60 per cent less residual waste, emboldening the council to stop searching for a replacement for its existing landfill, which is due to close in two years.

It expects more big cuts from the planned establishment of two new recycling centres, between Opotiki and East Cape, and is negotiating to truck the rest out of the district after running into opposition to an alternative landfill site.

Mr Reece admits he was among the doubters when an idealistic young Australian environmental consultant swept into the area, bent on changing his ways.

"I thought throwing rubbish in a hole was cheaper than anything else, and took a bit of convincing, but now I wonder why I thought the way I did."

Selling recovered resources helps to pay the wages of four previously unemployed people, and there will be two more jobs when the branch recycling centres open.

Modest though that might be, they are jobs plucked straight out of the waste stream, and the first chance of steady work for some.

Thirteen other jobs have been created in the district by a $1.3 million scheme, financed largely by the Eastern Bay Energy Trust, which has padded out 1000 homes of community card-holders with energy-saving materials. A further 400 homes are awaiting similar treatment.

Low-income householders such as pensioners and sickness beneficiaries no longer have to huddle under blankets to keep warm, and are reporting fewer coughs and wheezes.

Other communities, including Thames and Waitara, have received subsidies from the Government's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority for similar projects, and the Auckland People's Centre is trying to drum up funds to insulate up to 300 Manukau homes.

The Kaitaia community business centre not only runs the town's recycling base and an associated kerbside collection, but operates depots in Te Hapua and Russell and is preparing a waste reduction plan for the Far North District Council.

It has four tutors touring schools with a "slash trash" message, owns plant and tree nurseries from which it runs landscaping and afforestation services, and holds shares in a solar water-heating firm providing subsidised units to community-card holders.

These are all practical examples of a concept dubbed natural capitalism, which is uniting business leaders and environmental activists in a global movement aimed at wiser uses of the earth's dwindling natural resources.

The idea is that by valuing resources as natural capital, competitive business advantage can be gained by doing more with less, plugging "leakages" from local and national economies and leaving more money in circulation.

In a finite world where there is an over-supply of labour, but the store of once-plentiful natural capital has been drawn down to dangerous levels for short-term profit, the mission is to improve resource productivity rather than continue to shed labour.

Paul Hawken and co-authors Amory and Hunter Lovins have written in their bible of the new order, Natural Capitalism, that greater gains can come from "firing" wasted energy capacity, oil and forest pulp - while hiring more people to do so.

The trio have been hugely influential in their native United States, with President Bill Clinton and corporate giants paying close heed.

When Mr Hawken addressed a conference in Christchurch in June with fellow sustainability evangelist and Interface carpets company chairman Ray Anderson, Prime Minister Helen Clark rescheduled her weekly cabinet meeting to listen in.

She was challenged by Mr Hawken to help New Zealand to take advantage of its small size by becoming the first fully sustainable country, with a suggestion we could as an island nation adopt new technologies based on hydrogen from the waters surrounding us.

Mr Anderson, whose company is the world's largest commercial carpet-maker, has pioneered a system of leasing the "services" of his carpets, in a move away from an economy which churns out short-life products to maximise sales.

His system gives a strong financial incentive to produce durable carpets, which can be resold once leases on them expire, while leaving more cash in customers' hands to spend on other services.

New Zealand firms ranging from Fletcher Challenge and the Dairy Board to The Warehouse and Hubbard Foods have, meanwhile, set up the Business Council for Sustainable Development, aimed at balanced social, environmental and economic development.

Although sceptics might paint it as a pale-green alternative to the Business Roundtable, growing ranks of environmentalists see a strategic alliance with corporates as the only way of redirecting the global materials flow in time to avert ecological disaster.

Opotiki and the Far North are not isolated examples of efforts at grassroots levels in New Zealand.

They are among 26 communities whose councils have signed to a radical goal of cutting their waste contributions to landfills to zero by 2015.

The roll covers one-third of the country's local bodies, with each receiving incentive payments of $25,000 from the Zero Waste trust, which is financed heavily by the Tindall Foundation of The Warehouse founder, Stephen Tindall.

No northern cities have yet joined the cause, but Christchurch and Dunedin are on the list, as are Thames-Coromandel, Otorohanga, Ruapehu, Kawerau, Gisborne, Wairoa, Palmerston North, Hastings and Porirua.

Zero Waste trust director Warren Snow says local communities are only now waking up to their power to stop the one-way flow into landfills, and to demand that products are redesigned for greater resource productivity.

"They are starting to put their hand over the pipe and say 'enough' - and it is sending shudders all the way up the supply chain."

But he is confident of the ability of businesses to respond, despite the difficulty of redesigning entire production systems built for a throw-away society.

"Waste is something business can relate to - business understands it very clearly because waste impacts on its bottom line."

He says a growing band of designers around the world are working out ways to make products easier to pull apart for recycling, including those at Auckland whiteware and healthcare equipment manufacturer Fisher & Paykel.

And he says manufacturers are realising that when products are designed for disassembly, they become simpler and hence cheaper to make, while those who remain inefficient will be driven out of business.

At the other end of the "pipe," a survey two years ago found Auckland's recycling industry was already employing more than 1700 people at an average hourly wage of $12, and turning over at least $132 million annually.

One firm, Environplas Industries in Papakura, has added waste plastic granules to cement to develop light but tough patented paving slabs which it believes will become internationally competitive because of the lower freight costs.

Paralleling the Zero Waste campaign is the 28-member Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, which wants to take a leadership role in battling unemployment after the failure of successive Governments to get it below about 6 per cent of the workforce.

The latest Household Labour Force Survey figure of 5.9 per cent is the lowest in 12 years, but the taskforce is challenging the Government to support it in efforts to achieve a "zero waste" of people.

Christchurch Mayor and taskforce coordinator Garry Moore says there is no shortage of work to be done in the community, whether it is caring for the environment or for people such as the ill and elderly.

The challenge is for the Government to muster the political will to pay a living wage for work which until now has been under-valued, but which he says is essential for promoting a healthy society.

"We are trying to create a public awareness of an issue that hasn't gone away - we live with unemployed people, we see them walking the streets when they should be at work - their souls are dead."

The taskforce is preparing an action plan to ensure that by 2005, everyone under 25 either has a job or is training for a useful role in society.

Cliff Colquhoun, general manager of the Kaitaia centre he co-founded with Mr Snow, says it is constantly struggling for want of adequate Government support after 11 years of trying to promote community development.

Although it is hailed as a model of community enterprise, where few other such organisations have survived for long, he says it could be doing far more with just a modest lift in Government cash.

He says the centre receives only about $45,000 a year in Government development money, yet returns more than four times that amount in income tax and GST, while spending up to $500,000 in the local economy.

It is also saving the district council at least $75,000 a year on avoided landfill costs, while working in a grey area of profitability under which commercial companies would not find it viable to employ people.

Mr Colquhoun says community organisations are able to operate below break-even points, and hence employ more workers, if only the Government would provide top-up finance for "social entrepreneurs" such as himself to play their part.

He is disappointed his centre has had to trim job-creating operations to survive, while the Government seemingly prefers to spend more than $1 million a week on unemployment and related benefits in Kaitaia, not counting crime and other social costs.

He says there is no way capital investment can create enough jobs for the area's 1600 unemployed. A planned expansion of Juken Nissho's mill would produce 150 jobs at most, leaving community employment as the only tolerable alternative.

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