Dealing with our tonnes of rubbish

By AINSLEY THOMSON

New Zealanders produce a lot of rubbish - enough to fill a rugby field piled more than 30 storeys high every month.

Tomorrow, a nationwide campaign begins to encourage people to reduce the 3.6 million tonnes of rubbish produced each year.

The three-month "Reduce your Rubbish" campaign is being run by the Ministry for the Environment and regional councils.

One of the key messages is that 65 per cent of rubbish can be recycled or composted.

The campaign, which is based on the Auckland Regional Council's The Big Clean Up, will include television advertisements - two highlighting that rubbish does not go away, and three providing advice on how to make a difference. There will also be advertising in supermarkets and bus shelters.

Nationally, there will be a competition to encourage households to reduce rubbish and, from May, cloth bags will be available in some supermarkets as reusable carry bags.

In the Auckland area, local councils are starting a Create your own Eden programme which offers activities which teach composting.

On the North Shore, 400 households will be involved in a three-month trial of a new recycling and organic waste collection service.

Auckland Regional Council chairwoman Gwen Bull says that when people put their rubbish out each week, they think that is the end of the problem. But the rubbish does not go away.

When it is sent to landfills it is tightly compacted and sits there for decades taking up space.

"It's a crying shame we're not being smarter with the resources we already have. This is a huge waste to the economy," she said.

The campaign's website says there are not enough landfills to cope with the increasing amount of rubbish.

And as no one wants to live next to a rubbish-dump, there is a resistance to developing new, high-standard landfills.

While landfills are necessary, plastic, steel, aluminium and even paper can take tens or hundreds of years to break down. Decaying rubbish and kitchen scraps produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas 20 times worse than carbon dioxide.

Rubbish facts

* About 3.6 million tonnes of rubbish is produced each year.

* About 60 per cent of New Zealand's waste pile is from industry and 40 per cent from households.

* Recycling 1 tonne of paper saves: 17 trees, 26,421 litres of water, 1759 litres of oil, 266kg of air pollution, 1.25 cubic metres of landfill space and 4077 kilowatt hours of energy.

* Recycling one glass bottle saves enough electricity to generate a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. While recycling one aluminium can can save enough electricity to run a computer or television for three hours.

* There are more than a hundred landfill sites operating in New Zealand, taking over 3 million tonnes of rubbish each year.

Reduce Your Rubbish