Waste Minimisation - A Member's Bill to mend our wasteful ways

While I am here to tell you about my Waste Minimisation Bill, my real purpose is to win a measure of support, not just for my Bill, but also for a concept of waste minimisation that goes way beyond clean landfills and recycling programs. I will be frank, my Waste Minimisation Bill is designed to make it less attractive to throw stuff away so that we become a whole lot more choosy about the kind of stuff we take home. It is about changing attitudes to consumption, improving the quality of our lives, and getting serious about looking after the environment.

A month or two back I responded to a speech that Roger Kerr e-mailed out. While not unexpectedly I took issue with his position, in my response, I suggested that he probably cared as much about this lovely country and its future and that of our children and grandchildren, as I do. I suspect that the same could be said about your members. I wrote, that if we were to avoid a catastrophic breakdown in the capacity of the planet to sustain life it would take all of the skill, energy, resources and creativity of the business sector as well as the passion of people like myself, and the resources of government. (Although I suspect far less energy and resources and no more passion, skill or creativity than goes into maintaining the status quo.)

It is likely that in the next decade or two we will pass several disturbing environmental thresholds. The first, peak oil, the point at which demand for oil exceeds supply, is predicted for 2006 - 2007. The timing of a similar crisis over water demand is less certain, but we have been over-pumping all of the world's deep aquafers for many years. Some are already running dry and the rest must surely follow, and receding glaciers, reduced snowfall, and increasing urbanisation and industrialisation can only aggravate that situation. While both of these crises are already making or have the capacity to make life pretty miserable they are both survivable. The third crisis, climate change unless we take dramatic steps to prevent it, almost certainly isn't for most of humankind.

Climate change is already devastating lives and livelihoods and no one is likely to be unaffected by the consequences of the extreme weather events of the past couple of decades.

If you consider that today's effects are the consequence of a mere 90-ppm or one third increase in C0 2 in the space of 240 years. I ask you contemplate if you will, the possible consequences of a doubling in atmospheric CO 2 by the end of this century. That is during the lifetime of our children and our grandchildren. Some predict a trebling to the highest levels in 40 million years when sea levels were 12 m higher than they are right now. And the result? Increasingly frequent and extreme climate and weather events, saltwater intrusion into our aquifers, and a dramatic and irreversible loss of habitable and productive land as a consequence of desertification, sea level rises, and the possible disruption of the Gulf Stream currents.

The exact timing and consequences of these crises may be open to debate, but that they are happening and that they are the consequences of our behaviour is undeniable.

Climate change is the result of the way we live our lives. The products we buy, the food we eat, where we live, our transport habits. Our Waste Minimisation Bill is a modest attempt at changing those habits.
Waste Minimisation Authority
The New Zealand Waste Strategy is a worthy document with worthy goals. The Waste Minimisation Bill establishes the Waste Minimisation Authority, a body charged with implementing the Waste Strategy. While the negative will focus on measures to prevent folk from throwing stuff away, in fact it is the Waste Minimisation Authority's role to encourage and facilitate smarter production and consumption.

Landfill Levies
The activities of the W. M. A. will be funded from Landfill Levies. These are levies on all material going to landfill. While the Bill makes provision for carrots, this Bill is unashamedly a stick. If you're going to throw my children's inheritance away it will cost you.

Landfill Bans
It is already possible to recycle or avoid generating most of the waste we currently throw away. The third element in the W. M. Bill will ban currently recyclable products and resources from going to landfill. As our capacity to reuse and recycle is developed the authority will add to the banned items. The effectiveness of Landfill Bans and Landfill Levies are already clear. Where landfill bans and levies operate, industrial waste and demolition materials that once made up a substantial proportion of our waste are now recycled into useful material for other manufacturers and contractors. Frequently the practice results in savings all round. Less resources used, cost savings on waste disposal for manufacturers and processors, reduced waste disposal cost to local authorities and the communities as well as savings to the end users of what was formerly waste. All that and new, useful jobs and business opportunities. And who knows we may just help save the planet.

Extended Producer Responsibility Measures
E. P. R. is the fourth, and I would suggest the most important element in the Bill. If we are persuade New Zealanders to take home less of the stuff that contributes to the 10 million kilograms that we landfill everyday, they need to have the option of buying products that are made to last or that can be repaired. And we need to make it easier for them to buy products with reusable packaging, with less packaging, recyclable packaging or preferably no packaging at all. Extended producer responsibility measures are designed to make the producer and ultimately the consumer to take responsibility for the products they make and use, from production through to the end of their useful life. You can expect to see container deposit legislation similar to that operating in South Australia, Oregon, British Columbia, and to that which many of us here in New Zealand grew up with. You could also expect to see similar deposits on motor cars as called for recently by the New Zealand motor industry. But I would hope that a smart Waste Minimisation Authority would get behind those businesses that take the troubled to extol the virtue of buying quality and minimising waste, and fund marketing programs to create just that change in consumer attitudes.

Are New Zealand manufacturers capable of producing products that are made to last? Are they capable of a new attitude to packaging? That ought to be our edge. Extended Producer Responsibility to is a device for encouraging the manufacture of great products. New Zealanders deserve better than stuff designed to fall apart, stuff made somewhere else and stuff that is unable to be repaired. Why would New Zealand manufacturers want to attempt to out do the sweatshops of Asia in the business of producing landfill fodder?

There is a cost to waste. It is not just a money cost, or a material cost. It is a quality of life cost... we can't continue to throw away vast amounts of product everyday without working ever longer hours and depriving ourselves of the time to enjoy the company of the people we care about or the time it takes to enjoy the experience of living in this lovely country, and even if we recycle the lot, there just isn't enough energy or material resources to sustain an entire planet aspiring to similar levels of consumption without destroying the capacity of the planet to sustain life as we know it.

The Waste Minimisation Bill is not about going without, it is about doing things smarter, and meeting more of our needs locally and it is about aspiring to quality. It is one link in capitalising on all of our creativity, entrepreneurial flair, and innate Kiwi good sense to create the kind of future that we would wish for our children and ourselves.

Can for 4 million people make a difference on a planet with a population of six billion? Well they could make a difference for the 4 million and the planet is surely looking for role models.

Finally, I would suggest that the climate change, peak oil, and environmental disaster headlines are not about to go away. Those businesses that operate responsibly are going to be the business with the staff, suppliers, customers and communities who think they are great and they are likely to be the ones with the products and services that sell.

My Bill is both a challenge and an opportunity to create the only kind of future that can have a future. We deserve nothing less.