The government will shovel $124 million from the Covid-19 response and recovery fund into plastic recycling and reprocessing - and will push up its municipal waste levy six-fold by 2025.
Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage said funding for recycling plants, resource recovery and anaerobic, or oxygen free, digestion facilities will be allocated via the waste minimisation fund.
The Covid funding stimulus, which aims to reduce New Zealand's reliance on sending waste overseas for recycling, could also create upwards of 140 jobs during establishment, with an additional 250 ongoing jobs on a longer-term basis, she said.
The waste levy, the principle funding mechanism for the fund, was set at $10 per tonne when the fund was established in 2008.
It currently applies to municipal landfills that take household waste – about 45 per cent of the three million tonnes of waste sent to landfill annually - and generates about $36m per year.