Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill — Second Reading

I am delighted to be the final speaker in the second reading debate on the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill. I start by congratulating my colleague Nandor Tanczos on the incredible determination he has shown over the last 2 years. He picked up this bill from Mike Ward, who introduced it to Parliament and helped to develop it. When Mike left Parliament the bill was assigned briefly to my late co-leader, Rod Donald, who had always had a passion for waste issues, particularly for deposit return legislation and product stewardship. He held it for a mere 6 weeks, until his death, and then Nandor came into Parliament and picked it up, and he has done all the hard graft on it since then.

Members heard Nandor Tanczos describe how he has been around the country talking to local authorities, to people who operate recycling schemes, to people who get their hands grubby, to people who dump rubbish, and to business—very much to business—to find out how to make the bill more workable. He has also engaged with successive Ministers and officials, and he has drafted very substantial Supplementary Order Papers. In that time, he has shown perseverance, cooperation, and an ability to reach consensus positions, and I congratulate him on that. I am very glad that he has had the opportunity today, just before his departure from Parliament, to see that work come to fruition with the second reading of this bill. I say to Nandor that I am very pleased he is with us tonight. The bill will be taken through the Committee stage by the House’s newest MP, Russel Norman, and if the schedule proceeds as intended, he may in fact be sitting in the Minister’s chair on his second day in Parliament—so things go.

The key issues for a sustainable economy are energy, water, and waste. The Greens introduced New Zealand’s first-ever legislation on energy efficiency and conservation 10 years ago, and it was passed 8 years ago. That legislation has resulted in major changes in the way energy is used in New Zealand, including the introduction of minimum performance standards for products. These products have so far saved consumers $148 million on their power bills, as they have not had to buy lower-performing products.

This bill is the second leg of the trifecta. It is the first substantive bill covering waste management to come to the New Zealand Parliament, having achieved the support of nearly every party here, which is a real achievement. New Zealand is facing severe resource limits. In fact, our economy is bumping up against resource limits all the time, whether they be in terms of oil, water, land, fish, or minerals. It simply does not make sense to throw those resources away after one use when they can be recovered and used again.

We are facing environmental limits in terms of the capacity of the environment to absorb the waste we throw away. Waste is also one of the smaller contributors to climate change, as methane emerges from landfills when organic waste rots anaerobically. There is no waste in nature. Everything goes around in what Barry Commoner described as the closing circle. Over the years it has become more and more clear that if human societies, industries, and economies are to be sustainable in the long term, we have to mimic ecological processes as closely as we can in our production and consumption systems. So closing that circle and providing for resources to be used over and over again is an essential part of living sustainably.

It is now 32 years since I set up the first profitable local authority recycling scheme in New Zealand. It was for the Devonport Borough Council in 1976. I was working for the Environmental Defence Society at the time. I will not go into all the history of it, but the society decided that, instead of contributing to the pollution from the landfill, it was interested in setting up a kerbside recycling scheme, having a composting scheme at the tip for organic waste, and encouraging people to separate their waste. The society wanted to extend the life of its landfill, avoid transport costs, and do the right thing environmentally.

We planned that on a budget of $500. We had no buildings and we had no hard standing. We hired some skips, we had a guy at the gate, and we concentrated on good community information and conversations. We encouraged people to make compost in their own backyards, and many did. We made compost with a front-end loader and shredder in open windrows at the tip site, and it did pretty well. Two-thirds of the material that had been going into the landfill was diverted from the landfill into the recycling scheme, and it made a profit for the council.

Once that was done, I thought: “OK, now we just have to sit back and wait for every other council to adopt it.” But did they? No. There was apparently something special about the people of Devonport that could not be copied anywhere else. One or two councils that did try over-engineered and spent so much capital that they had no chance of ever recovering it, and, of course, they made a loss.

It is a long way from there to here, but we learnt a few things from that process, and I would like to draw the attention of New Zealand First to one of the things we learnt. We put a charge on rubbish bags. We encouraged people to recycle by putting a charge on rubbish bags, which paid for the disposal—user pays—but we did not get an increase in illegal dumping.

Hon Harry Duynhoven: What was the charge?

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS: Illegal dumping had always happened to a small extent, and it did not increase in any way at all. The charge was $2 a bag, which was quite a lot in 1976, and certainly much less than $10 a tonne that is being proposed here. So I do not really think that that argument will hold water.

We also discovered that if we are going to recycle properly, we have to design for reuse and recycling when a product is made. It is no good putting together multiple layers of metal, plastic, cardboard, and wax coatings, and then asking someone to take them apart and do something useful with them. So design for durability, reuse, and recycling has to be built in, and that is what this bill will achieve through the product stewardship scheme.

I am sorry that the Government procurement part of the bill has disappeared. I do think that the Government needs to show leadership. We do have the little waste boxes at the moment as part of the Govt3 programme, and many people have been using those for a long time. [Interruption] I am sorry Rodney is not here to hear this little lecture. There will always be a few laggards and renegades, and they are the ones we have to regulate for. Other people will do it voluntarily. But never mind; there it is.

I would thank all the submitters who made it easier for Nandor to develop this bill in the best direction. I thank the various Ministers who cooperated and other members of the House who have cooperated on the select committee. I thank the National Party for coming to the party after an absolutely scathing attack on the bill during the first reading debate. But National members came to their senses and joined us, and that is just great. I commend this bill to the House. I look forward to its Committee stage, and, once again, I thank Nandor for doing a fine job.