Green and growing, that's the trick

In 1996, Tasman Pulp and Paper faced spending $7 million on a new tip for its Kawerau mill.

It was running 10 big trucks to carry waste to the landfill, and grading a 4km metal road to the tip every second day.

Those costs were almost totally unnecessary, as Tasman found when it called in Peter Fredricsen from a small Hamilton company, Materials Processing Ltd.

"We went there to look at securing some bark material. Their commodities manager showed me round," he says.

"He took me to look at their landfill. They had consents there to last 25 years. Eight years on, it was close to full."

He offered to investigate, and found that while Tasman's mill was dumping its offcuts at the tip, the company was buying offcuts from mills as far afield as Kumeu to fuel its boilers.

Mr Fredricsen diverted the local offcuts to the boilers.

He found that other waste material going into the tip from a toilet paper mill could be used to make apple trays and egg cartons.

In all, he cut Tasman's wastes going to the tip by 95 per cent, and cut solid wastes from the toilet paper factory to precisely zero.

"From the Tasman site alone, that was more than $1 million a year in savings." And Mr Fredricsen says the planned $7 million tip will never be needed.

It's a classic example of the kind of 'win-win' approach that New Zealand needs if it is to achieve both higher living standards and a cleaner, greener environment.

A background paper on sustainable economic strategies for the Catching the Knowledge Wave conference shows that we haven't been doing too well on either front.

The rate of growth in our living standards since 1984 has been the slowest in the developed world. Yet we still managed to increase our greenhouse gas emissions during the 1990s, when the European Union reduced them.

In his May Budget, Finance Minister Michael Cullen adopted a goal of 4 per cent annual growth. Last week National Party leader Jenny Shipley raised the ante, advocating growth of 6 per cent a year.

But if we grow by simply expanding current production using current processes, the result will be more waste going to the tip, more greenhouse gases and more pollution.

Dr Rodger Spiller, of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, believes it is possible to grow while reducing pollution.

Tasman's $1 million annual saving, for example, represents a real increase in net output and profit, while reducing both wastes and emissions from trucks that used to go the tip.

For some other businesses, however, Dr Spiller says it may still pay to pollute unless society gives companies the right incentives by taxing their pollution.

"To those who say we can't have economic growth at 5 or 6 per cent and have a healthy environment, that argument can be addressed by ensuring that the economic growth is not at the cost of the environment," he says.

"There doesn't need to be an 'either/or.' It can be a 'both/and'."

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