Rob Fenwick: We need to reduce our piles of waste

In Colin James' column describing five useful thoughts to help us prepare for the year, he suggests the task of getting New Zealand clean and green and 100 per cent pure should be shared by more than those with a penchant for rope sandals and human compost.

As someone whose business has produced nearly a quarter of a million tons of compost and sold it to the good farmers and gardeners of the lower North Island (including, I believe, Mr James), I welcome his call for more Kiwis to join the march towards a sustainable future and to underpin the country's brand values with a commitment to environmental responsibility.

Unfortunately it will take more than just thinking about it.

While there is much each of us can do in our daily lives to protect planet Earth and promote Brand New Zealand by thinking more resourcefully, in many cases the economic levers are being pulled in the wrong direction to produce the community responses which lead to significant change.

Changing the direction of the levers could lead to large reductions in the country's eco-footprint, but it takes political courage.

The policies and economic signals that could drive society towards waste reduction warrant examination. New Zealand produces a huge amount of waste which is dumped in landfills. We remain among the world's most wasteful countries per capita.

In 2001 New Zealand developed a National Waste Strategy which included the promotion of national targets for waste reduction, particularly for organic waste, which is correctly identified as being the most harmful in landfills because it produces methane and leachate, as well as being the most easy to separate in the household.

In point of fact, volumes of waste to landfills have increased since the introduction of the strategy.

Strategies and voluntary targets clearly aren't enough, particularly when the cost of disposal is relatively cheap and the cost of recovering resources by recycling, reuse, composting and so on is comparatively expensive. Many who were involved in the development of the national strategy argued the need for a national waste levy, an environmental charge that helps recover the true cost to the economy and the environment of chucking stuff away.

The levy provides a fund to encourage resource recovery initiatives. It's a good example of trying to target the revenue burden away from economic "goods" to environmental "bads".

In many states of the United States and Australia, and universally throughout Europe and Britain, waste levies have been the principal lever to drive waste reduction.

Anxious to meet their waste reduction targets and promote local recycling programmes, several local authorities here, including Christchurch, North Shore, Waitakere and Rodney, have introduced bylaws to impose their own waste levies.

While some will sympathise with the councils' frustration in the absence of direction from central Government, particularly the Ministry for the Environment, the introduction of ad hoc local levies will create chaos when waste generators and unscrupulous collectors try to avoid cost and direct their waste from one landfill to another.

A court action challenging the legality of these local authority charges will be heard next month.

At a national level, the resource recovery and waste sector - businesses that recover glass, paper, steel and organic waste, and the large waste collection and disposal companies - is united in calling for a universal national levy.

They say that if the purpose of the levy is to provide an incentive to separate household waste streams, it needs to be imposed fairly across the whole community.

Provided levy funds are ring-fenced or hypothecated for investment in recycling and resource recovery, it will be a positive economic instrument to reduce the nation's embarrassing waste mountain.

Maybe because of the impending court case, or because the industry is united, the Ministry for the Environment gave some signals late last year that it would review the merits of a national waste levy.

How might it work at a practical level?

In a throwaway society there are several challenges confronting resource recovery initiatives.

Firstly, it is cheaper and more convenient for consumers to dump stuff in the mixed waste stream than to separate resources and make them available for recovery businesses.

A levy increases the cost of dumping mixed rubbish, motivating the public to separate waste in the household or factory.

Secondly, the cost of resource recovery processing is generally more expensive than the cost of landfilling. This makes investment in resource recovery less attractive to private and public businesses.

Closing the cost gap and making recovery competitive would lead to greater investment.

Thirdly, any serious attempt at waste reduction nationally needs a shift in the public psyche. Overseas experience shows how spending funds from waste levy revenues on public education programmes and pilot schemes accelerates waste reduction.

Waste levies are mostly charged by the weight of garbage a waste collector dumps in the landfill. The extra cost is, appropriately, passed on to the generator of the waste.

Market surveys and public support evidenced in community projects like Zero Waste suggest Kiwis are not wilful wasters.

However, the combined legacies of councils historically subsidising rubbish dumps, a shortage of viable resource recovery businesses and central Government inaction have seen us drift to the top of the world's most wasteful countries.

A shift in the financial indicators to steer positive public behaviour could see some immediate progress towards waste reduction and a big step in Colin James' appeal in protecting the clean green New Zealand brand.

* Rob Fenwick is chairman of the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development and a director of Living Earth Ltd.