Watch NZH Local Focus: Recycling decreasing across NZ

In New Zealand, most household rubbish usually ends up in the landfill.

But that's not the case at Raglan's recycling centre, Xtreme Zero Waste.

Co-manager Rick Thorpe says at least 80% of the waste is diverted away from the landfill because the 'resources' get repurposed.

"We're not the conventional landfill as in what was around 20 years ago. But you know the tides are turning. The landfill is a dying industry and we all have to be involved in waste management," Mr Thorpe says.

But nationally, recycling has dropped by six percent according to the latest government review

And that's why pressure is growing to encourage recycling by making it more expensive to take rubbish to the dump, with an increase to the Waste Disposal Levy.

Chair of the Community Recycling Network, Marty Hoffart says the amount of waste going into landfill is increasing at an alarming rate and the levy needs to be increased - as is recommended in a report released this week by the Waste Levy Action Group.

"Our waste to landfill has gone up 16% and the levy at the moment is not working. It is too cheap. So the community recycling network is all for increasing the levy to $140 a tonne, anything is better than [the current] 10 dollars a tonne because it would bring more money back into the local economy for job creation around recovering the materials," Mr Hoffart says.

The report commissioned by the Waste Levy Action Group says that a much higher levy would encourage people to recycle more and would create up to 9,000 new jobs.

Rick Thorpe says Raglan's recycling centre has been recycling for nearly twenty years and the centre employs 29 staff.

"It's most important that we try and remove ourselves from this old landfill mentality and the best way to do that is to increase the levies so that it becomes a penalty for the people who are creating the waste," Mr Thorpe says.

But not everyone agrees. Tokoroa resident Arthur van Rihn says higher dumping costs could lead to miscellaneous rubbish dumping outside of the controlled landfill environment.

"My biggest fear is if they do increase the charges, or put levies up, you're gonna find it's gonna end up on the side of the road, or in holes on the farm, or wherever, where nobody's got a control over it, " Mr van Rihn says.

Associate Environment Minister Scott Simpson says the levy works well but he's open to exploring other options and methods of "charging more for some waste than others, so things that we don't particularly want to go to landfill would have a higher charge than things that are going to be less problematic in landfills."

In the 8 years since the Waste Disposal Levy was introduced more than $80m has been returned to the community to support waste minimisation projects.

Made with funding from