Making user pay when it's time to take out trash

The Government wants to see the cost of disposing of old products transferred to producers and consumers - and away from ratepayers and taxpayers.

Some firms and industries are already operating voluntary schemes based on the principle of "product stewardship" - the idea that producers, importers, retailers and consumers accept responsibility for the environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.

Fisher & Paykel collects traded-in whiteware - its own brand or others - from its retail outlets and recycles as much of the materials they contain as it can.

Telecom and Vodafone collect old cellphones, which they ship to Singapore to recover the valuable metals they contain and dispose of the hazardous ones.

From September 1, designated Resene stores in Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty will take back used paint cans and their contents.

Used automotive oil is collected and burned in Holcim's cement works.

And a year-old accord between Government and industry sets targets for the recycling of packaging materials.

A Ministry for the Environment discussion document, released last month, says the preferred approach is to encourage such voluntary industry-led agreements, but with back-up powers to regulate and to deal with free-riders, or to impose a mandatory regime for the most hazardous wastes or where no voluntary regime is forthcoming.

"The main strengths of the voluntary approach are that it provides flexibility and the opportunity for industry leadership, and avoids effort in areas where there may be little benefit from a scheme," the ministry says.

"The main limitations are that scheme development is slow and piecemeal."

The idea is that shifting the burden for managing wastes from the ratepayer to those who make the products and those who buy them provides incentives to use resources efficiently.

A mandatory approach has commonly been adopted in Europe and Japan but more recent policies in Canada and Australia rely on schemes initiated and led by industry, with regulation used as a back-stop to discourage free-riders.

As the environment ministry's general manager for sustainable industry and climate change Bill Bayfield outlines it, the official thinking is heavy on pragmatism and keen to avoid the "it may work in practice but it doesn't work in theory" approach.

"If we had regulated the glass sector off the shelf after the price of glass collapsed, we would have made a dog's breakfast of it," he said.

The kerbside collection of glass was thrown into disarray after Owens Illinois (formerly ACI Glass) slashed the price it pays for clear glass for recycling from $75 to $10 a tonne. It is a capacity constraint problem: with its furnaces operating around the clock, it has opted to concentrate on amber and green glass.

John Webber, of the Packaging Council of New Zealand, said that as a result, the major importers of glass of all colours had entered into a voluntary levy programme for a six-month period so that the collectors were not disadvantaged.

"We are working on several options to mitigate the problem. The Government looks at that as a working example of product stewardship. We did it ourselves. We got in a room and talked it through," Webber said.

"We have been amazingly fortunate that most people have said this is a worthwhile exercise and come to the party, certainly in the interim while we look at other alternative uses [for the clear glass]."

Webber said that in the absence of any sanction against free-riders, there was a case for saying some product stewardship regulation or legislation would be helpful.

"I guess a lot of business folk in an over-regulated community fear that would be a first step towards something less desirable, but the nature of what is being proposed probably obviates that."

For F&P, it is a matter of indifference whether other whiteware manufacturers or distributors were forced to undertake something like its take-back scheme.

F&P Appliances' spokesman Brian Nowell said: "At the moment, we break even but that includes recycling factory waste as well."

The ultimate disposal of the product features in its design thinking. "We try to design away from nasties like [ozone depleting] chlorofluorocarbons. We don't use them as refrigerants or as foaming agents. We use lead-free solders. But benign alternatives have to be available."

The used-oil scheme involves three of the four major oil companies, but none of the numerous other brands of lubricant on the market.

Shell general manager Jim Collings said the oil was collected from workshops and transported to Holcim's plant in Westport. "They burn it at high temperatures which destroys most of the nasties as well as providing an energy source for their production," he said.

"But because not all of the oil is collected, there will be people using it in other kinds of furnaces which don't necessarily burn it the way it should be, which will have an environmental impact as well."

Shell would prefer a regulated environment. "It levels the playing field but, more importantly, it ensures complete capture. There is still a large do-it-yourself environment as far as oil changes go."

The Government was concerned that setting up a bureaucracy would eat up too much of any levy collected. "But there must be ways around that," Collings said.

Resene's scheme is based on a successful pilot it ran on the North Shore.

"A lot of councils won't accept paint cans at the kerbside even though they are perfectly recyclable," marketing manager Karen Warman said. "They are melted down at such a high temperature that all the gunk burns off before the steel melts."

Although a small charge would be added to the cost of Resene paint purchases in areas where the scheme was available, it was still heavily subsidised by the company, she said. Paint of other brands could also be returned, for a small fee.

Any paint left in the cans is either made available for community groups to use or mix together - it comes out grey - for such purposes as painting over graffiti-covered walls.

NEW LIFE FOR OLD GOODS

Fisher & Paykel collects traded-in whiteware and recycles what is possible.

Telecom and Vodafone collect old cellphones, which are shipped to Singapore. From September 1, Resene stores in Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty will take back used paint cans and their contents.

Used automotive oil is collected and burned in Holcim's cement works.