In the short-term, over the next ten years, the council is to establish a resource recovery network and city-wide organic waste collection, issue no new landfill consents, and start investigating ways to use a fast-tracked resource consent process to reward good waste minimisation practices.
The June 2012 Auckland Waste Management and Minimisation Plan already requires the introduction of consistent waste collection services across the region, moving everyone to a disposer pays rubbish collection system similar to that already in place in Waitakere, the North Shore, Franklin, Papakura and Rodney, sometime from 2015/2016. Recycling and food waste will be free to put out. Rubbish, under current price estimates, will cost about $2.50 per lift for an average-sized bin, which will be collected once per fortnight.
At the same time, the resource recovery network would bring commercial and community organisations together to sort, take apart and recover discarded materials. Instead of sending a mattress straight to landfill, for example, springs could be recycled and foam repurposed. If possible, broken items could be repaired and sold.
Households only contributed about 20 per cent of waste sent to landfill in 2010 and Auckland Council itself only oversees about 17 per cent of the region's rubbish collection and processing, with most of the rest controlled by Chinese-owned EnviroWaste and Waste Management.
The wider challenge - and the one with implications for the rest of New Zealand - is to reduce waste at its source by changing product design, manufacturing and consumption habits.
"It's that whole philosophy of 'I'll buy something, I use it, I chuck it'," Sood says. "The products today are not made to last very long. It's more expensive to fix than actually buy a new one."
The Low Carbon Auckland Plan sets a target of eight mandatory product stewardship schemes in New Zealand by 2020, rising to 20 by 2030 and 100 by 2040. By 2040, closed-loop manufacturing and processing would be required for all new businesses in Auckland.
Mandatory product stewardship would require national legislation. The council is also looking at lobbying central government to increase the waste levy it places on trucks carrying waste to landfill.
What's product stewardship?
Consumer products often carry a hidden long-term environmental cost, which is rarely borne by manufacturers and producers.
Product stewardship means taking responsibility for products from extraction of raw materials to reuse, recycling or disposal. This includes pricing any later costs up front rather than leaving them to be picked up - often by ratepayers - when goods are discarded.
The end goal is to change the way businesses and consumers think about product design, and usher in an era of high resource-use efficiency.
Some businesses in Auckland are already making the shift. Cavalier Bremworth, a carpet manufacturer headquartered in South Auckland, is using recycled old woollen carpet as a backing for new carpet instead of jute, which is imported to New Zealand.
It's an economic and environmental win. Cavalier Bremworth doesn't need to buy jute and the company says it will divert about 1200 tonnes of waste carpet away from landfill each year - the equivalent of covering an entire rugby field up to 6.5m deep. Prices for customers are expected to stay the same.
Resene's take-back scheme to collect, re-use and recycle unwanted paint is another example of product stewardship in New Zealand.
Future scenario
• 97 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions associated with waste are eliminated
Residents can have their say on the Auckland Low Carbon Action Plan on the Auckland Council website. The closing date is 7 April 2014.
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