Indonesia has reportedly sent hundreds of containers of contaminated plastic back to where they came from, including five container loads to New Zealand. Photo / File
Indonesia has reportedly sent hundreds of containers of contaminated plastic back to where they came from, including five container loads to New Zealand. Photo / File
EDITORIAL:
Yet again, there is further concerning evidence that our much-touted environmental credentials simply do not stack up.
What is piling up, however, are the mountains of rubbish New Zealand is sending offshore.
In September, Indonesia reportedly sent hundreds of containers of contaminated plastic back to where they came from, including five container loads back here. Yet that hasn't stopped mountains of non-recyclable waste being stockpiled, burnt as fuel or piling up in streets - ending up polluting residential areas and waterways. A study has found dangerously high levels of toxins entering the food chain near our new dumping grounds there.
It's well past time we buried the myth that our "recycling exports" are anything other than dirty, toxic, polluting, unwanted, wasteful rubbish.
Given the amount of waste in our world, there will be a need for a recycling industry for the foreseeable future. But it must be a legitimate industry wherever it operates, with the right aims and practices and safeguards, that benefits everyone.
Recycling actually represents a failure - to prevent and reduce waste in the first place. Photo / File
While it is pleasing to see the innovative efforts in the recycling field, it should still be remembered, even at best, recycling is actually a sign of failure. It is not as bad as outright dumping, of course, as it works to "reuse" non-disposable items, but, like dumping, it still demonstrates a failure to prevent or reduce our waste; to change our damaging and short-sighted manufacturing policies, processes and products; to modify our gross consumption habits and put sustainability first.
It is a blight to continue our "out of sight, out of mind" colonialist thinking by shipping off our waste for offshore processing in less developed countries. Sending mountains of actually non-recyclable products - contaminated because of failures at stages of the recycling process at our end - is unethical and exploitative, if not downright criminal.
While transferring our dirty little secret so we can perpetuate the clean, green New Zealand myth is shameful, we are far from our 100% Pure label at home, too.
The images of the trail of utter waste destruction over a wide area after the Fox Glacier landfill was washed into the Fox River and West Coast beaches was a wake-up call. That was only one of the numerous old landfills being exposed through erosion and becoming not just an eyesore but an environmental catastrophe.
New Zealanders need to rethink their environmental credentials and work far harder to address our waste mountains. Photo / File
The time and effort it took from the Government, manufacturers, retailers and consumers to adopt one simple waste-reduction action - ditching the single-use plastic bag, for example - was ridiculous.
Our attitudes and false narratives must change to a genuine "waste not, want not" culture. Household habits, industry practices, and government policies need to change while individuals, companies and authorities must stop passing the buck, and start doing far better by our environment - and ultimately ourselves.
