KEY POINTS:
Five avocados on a polystyrene tray glisten in their cling-film wrapping. Green and firm, why do they need protection? Time-poor shoppers deposit them in their trolleys without breaking stride.
On to the next aisle for batteries encased in plastic and cardboard packaging that defies easy access and is useless once opened. Convenience?
It's getting harder to buy anything without packaging. Grocers wrap pre-cut fruit and vegetables to match supermarkets. Many hardware stores sell nuts and bolts in packs of 10 when you want just one. Our shopping aisles are lined with garbage - much of it necessary to protect fragile items or for safety reasons. Most of it is recyclable, although many plastics are still rejected for recycling.
Shrink-wrapped avocados are apparently a way of flogging-off small fruit after a poor growing season. With big fruit a hideous price, five smaller ones for $5 is a good deal, says Fresh Direct chairman Jeff Turner.
The company also wraps organic produce in plastic, which Turner admits might seem incongruous. It's so that shoppers and checkout operators can distinguish it from non-organically grown produce.
But much packaging is mere marketing psychology to make products more attractive, or for display, or already-packaged goods put in multipacks to make us spend more.
In many ways, shoppers are willing parties to this waste. Consumer demand has fuelled the explosion in prepared foods, such as readymade salads with plastic dipping pottles.
They come sealed in plastic for freshness and hygiene, often nestled in plastic bowls and housed in cardboard for added protection.
The Government is supporting new legislation planned by the Green Party which could change the face of not only the goods we buy but also how we dispose of them.
New Zealanders have embraced household recycling to varying degrees. We still send truckloads of green waste to landfills, along with pet-food tins which we can't be fussed to clean.
Kerbside recycling is available in most urban areas but success rates vary. Few councils take more than grades 1 and 2 plastics because of fluctuating markets. Supermarket bags make up 6 per cent of material sent to landfill.
The Auckland City Council says almost half the rubbish put in wheelie bins could be composted and a further 22 per cent put in kerbside bins for recycling. Nationwide, between 2.2 million and 2.5 million tonnes are recycled each year, a molehill compared with the 300 million tonnes added to landfills.
Enter Nandor Tanczos, the Green MP whose waste minimisation bill has consumed whole forests in the making but which promises to turn us green - from product makers to consumers.
The draft bill, expected to begin select committee hearings within weeks, has big and small businesses in a lather. It threatens to create its own mountain of paperwork, requiring all organisations to produce waste minimisation plans vetted by councils and overseen by a central Waste Minimisation Authority.
Industry is railing against the bill's more draconian clauses, such as mandatory fines for non-complying firms. It argues that gains are being made through voluntary initiatives, such as the Packaging Accord, which should be allowed to run its course.
But in an example of MMP in practice, parts of the bill have Government backing and are expected to become law, including levies on the volume of waste sent to landfill and a product stewardship scheme making manufacturers responsible for what happens to products from cradle to grave.
Tanczos says it will mean the polluter pays, but the costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers.
Waste levies, initially set at $25 a tonne but rising over time, are intended as a financial incentive to reduce waste and create a contestable fund for environmental initiatives, such as commercial recycling of household and restaurant food wastes into compost.
Product stewardship, or "extended producer responsibility", will force manufacturers and importers to provide for the collection of the product at the end of its life, and may see the return of container deposit schemes.
Garth Wyllie, executive director of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, says 90 per cent of cosmetics are imported and packaging is critical to sales.
"If product stewardship were to be imposed on the cosmetics industry there would be a significant exodus of products from the New Zealand marketplace."
The levy is supported by the Business Council for Sustainable Development, whose membership includes Fonterra, Coca-Cola Amatil, Griffins and The Warehouse.
For the Government, the bill is a chance to back Prime Minister Helen Clark's pre-Christmas pledges on global warming with action at a time of heightened public interest.
"We were planning to have our own legislation in these areas so when the bill came along we felt it was a good opportunity to see if we could turn it into something we were happy with," says Environment Minister David Benson-Pope.
Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the Stern Report have "changed the climate, literally," says Benson-Pope. Even those who deny climate change are acknowledging that the issues are real and the public is worried about maintaining our clean, green advantage. "It means I can move on this sort of stuff a bit faster than I thought I might be able to."
Globally, however, we may be dragging the chain - our green image is more illusion than reality.
Since the early-1990s, European countries have progressively introduced carrot-and-stick incentives to encourage recycling and several have deposit refund schemes.
In this country, support for mandatory levies appears to stem from a waste disposal industry challenge to the ability of local councils, which have responsibilities to minimise waste sent to landfills, to impose levies.
Last April, attempts by four Auckland councils to levy waste collectors and landfill operators were ruled illegal by the High Court.
But are we making too much of the waste mountain? The latest Ministry for the Environment landfill audit, not yet published, will show we're throwing away no more than in 2002.
By 2010, most of our worst landfills - the ones that leach chemicals into waterways and don't tap methane gas - will have closed.
The ministry is similarly upbeat about industry initiatives to reduce waste and recycle.
Examples abound: Resene's paint recovery service, waste oil recovery, whiteware recycling, use of glass and demolition waste in road aggregate, waste exchange websites and the Design for Environment guidelines launched this week in the plastics industry.
Fonterra eco-efficiency manager Spring Humphries says businesses are reducing their ecological footprints voluntarily. Fonterra requires its suppliers to minimise packaging and recycle. Its subsidiaries have halved waste sent to landfills and export plastics to China for recycling into polyester, which comes back in clothing.
Packaging Council executive director Paul Curtis says the three-year-old Packaging Accord is on track to achieving its five-year waste reduction targets.
The Warehouse, supermarkets and producers such as Fonterra are making significant strides.
"There's a real critical mass going on. Over time we are closing the gap between consumption and recovery. We are now recovering 52 per cent."
Curtis says the bill's focus on packaging is disproportionate compared to the real waste generators.
By volume, just 12 per cent of rubbish going into landfills is packaging. Green waste makes up 40 per cent with the rest made up of construction wastes and discarded oil and paint.
"So there are some easily identifiable big wins that don't necessarily need legislative action as long as industries get on board. There may be a need for Government action but not legislation."
But Rachel Depree, sustainable industry manager for the the Ministry for the Environment, says regulation is needed to take us to the "next phase" - which includes a locally-viable recovery and recycling market and product design to minimise waste.
With tyres and oil, for instance, voluntary recycling "won't go to the next step until the entire industry is involved so we need to move to a more regulated framework."
Certainly, the industry initiatives are not all-encompassing enough for the Greens, or the Government. Benson-Pope is wary of the depth of industry's green conversion, citing the prosecution of Waikato farmers for breaching dairy effluent rules despite Federated Farmers' signing-up to the Clean Streams Accord.
"And I'm yet to be convinced there's a reason to have any plastic food or beverage containers that aren't recyclable in this country.
He says the Packaging Accord is great - but not the behaviour of all its members.
Many businesses making sustainability moves fear their competitors will gain a cost advantage by not making the same investment.
"I'm keen not to regulate if we can avoid it but industry is saying they do want a backstop so they can get rid of the free-riding that goes on." But the Government will not support some clauses, including the creation of a central authority and additional powers for councils.
Tanczos is keen to ease industry fears, saying most businesses will not have to prepare waste minimisation plans or product stewardship schemes.
He says much misinformation is flying around the bill and a number of its clauses could be softened during the select committee process. "Businesses and councils that are serious about helping get on top of our enormous waste problem will benefit from the bill.
"There is nothing in the bill to restrict the variety of goods available but, yes, it does say industry has to take responsibility for the waste it generates over the life of its products.
"There are many different ways of taking that responsibility."
