We're a wasteful culture

By SIMON COLLINS

When Murray Begg started making shoes 30 years ago, they were made to last.

Fresh out of the Napier jail, where he had been incarcerated for a drug offence, the 18-year-old fell in love with "the smell of the leather".

He started a business, the Last Footwear Company, which made shoes out of vegetable-tanned leather and natural rubber in ways that were designed so that they could later be repaired rather than thrown out.

"We also provided the service facilities for repairing the product, so we assumed life-cycle responsibility for it," he says.

And the shoes lasted. Douglas Fitzgerald, who ran the company's Auckland branch in Newmarket, says he hardly ever saw the same customers twice.

But, unlike his shoes, Mr Begg's dream did not last. Other shareholders, dissatisfied with poor profits, closed the Auckland shop and shifted manufacturing to Fiji last year, abandoning a factory in Christchurch that, at its peak, employed 50 people.

Slashed import duties mean you can now buy shoes for $49.95, compared with $300-$400 from Last Footwear in its heyday.

But there is a cost. Michael Ankersmit, who joined his father in the Auckland City Heel and Sole Bar 20 years ago, says modern injection-moulded plastic shoes sometimes fall apart in two months.

"Instead of cutting out a piece of leather and putting a separate heel block on for about $20 a pair, now they glue on moulded sole units costing $6 a pair," he says.

"The problem is that they use combinations that don't work very well and they tend to split. A lot of them are designed basically not to be repaired."

It is not just shoes. A Consumers' Institute survey in 2001 found some manufacturers who said their fan heaters and electric jugs were designed to have an "economic life" of just one year. If they broke down after that, it would be cheaper to replace them.

Even industrial Machinery has a shortened lifespan. A shipping executive who recently visited a Fiji sugar mill says it is still using some machines that were built 100 years ago. But newer machines installed in the past 20 years are already breaking down.

In New Zealand, homes that are rotting within a few years of being built are symptomatic of a world that no longer seems to build things to last.

From nappies and razors to medical equipment, we have got into the habit of throwing things out after a single use. We replace computers and cellphones with the latest version every few years.

Old, discarded goods pile up in our cupboards and basements and, eventually, in tips.

Despite our clean, green image, the average New Zealand household tips out about 400kg of residential waste per person per year, plus a further 500kg of industrial waste.

Other wealthy countries are no better. European Union citizens generate 3.5 tonnes of waste per person per year, including 500kg of residential waste.

But that was little comfort when an Environment Ministry survey found in March that 104 of New Zealand's 115 operating landfills have a medium to high risk of contaminating surface water running off the site, 85 of them risk contaminating groundwater and 80 risk gas leaks.

Apart from belching animals, wastes are our major source of methane, one of the "greenhouse gases" that trap part of the sun's heat in the Earth's atmosphere, pushing up average world temperatures by 0.4C in the past century.

In most developed countries, Governments are now forcing the pace of recycling.

The European Union has banned landfilling of liquid wastes and most tyres, and will require manufacturers of computers and other electrical and electronic equipment to recycle between 50 and 75 per cent of their products by the end of 2006.

Nine European countries, 11 US states, eight Canadian provinces, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and South Australia have all introduced refundable-deposit schemes for at least some kinds of cans or bottles to encourage recycling.

In New Zealand, many local authorities have imposed landfill restrictions. All councils now ban whole tyres from tips because they trap air and gradually work their way to the surface.

A national waste strategy issued last year set recycling targets but has not yet been followed up by any specific regulations or incentives.

"We are quite a way behind," says Peter Higgs of Hamilton waste collection company Perry Environmental.

"The main reason is that overseas, a lot of the recycling is subsidised. In New Zealand the national philosophy is to remove subsidies."

But the user-pays philosophy has brought a dramatic shift towards charging for landfills. As late as 1998, only 45 per cent of tips charged for waste disposal. By last year it was 82 per cent.



Smart companies such as Wellington's Formway Furniture are now adopting Murray Begg's philosophy and designing their products so that parts can be replaced.

Carpet maker Interface has gone further and switched from selling carpet to leasing it with a continuing maintenance contract.

Landfill charges, flexible production and a shift to leasing will never bring back the kind of stability that allowed the Fiji sugar mills to use the same machinery for 100 years, unless technological change slows down again.

But such changes are beginning to shift the throwaway mindset. With luck, they may even bring back a tradition of repairing shoes.