Easy Earth's Mike Downie loads a full bin of Honest Kitchen food waste, and replaces it with an empty bin. Photo / Bevan Conley
Easy Earth's Mike Downie loads a full bin of Honest Kitchen food waste, and replaces it with an empty bin. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui recyclers have given a thumbs up to the Government's Transforming Recycling plan - but they say the devil may be in the detail.
The plan, announced by Environment Minister David Parker, went out for consultation on March 13. It aims to shift towards a circular economy, where packaging ismade of materials that maintain their value, are easy to recycle and have a low impact on the environment.
Recyclables are to be collected at the kerb everywhere in New Zealand. Collections will include food and other organic waste, from businesses and households.
Also planned is a container deposit/return scheme, whereby bottles and other containers cost an extra 20c and can be returned to redeem the money.
Whanganui environmentalists say the plan has been a long time coming.
"That would be New Zealand catching up with other countries," Whanganui Kai Hub co-ordinator Joe Thompson said.
Honest Kitchen business development manager Charlie Meyerhoff has worked in Canada and said it was doing these things in 2009.
"That shows how far behind we are."
New Zealand creates 17 million tonnes of rubbish a year, and 13 million tonnes of it gets sent to landfill. Only 28 per cent is recycled. The plan aims to lift that to 50 per cent - on a par with Germany, Austria and Wales.
The chairman of Whanganui District Council's Waste Minimisation Advisory Group, councillor Rob Vinsen, likes all the plan's main planks.
The council is heading in the same direction, with planned kerbside collection of recyclables starting next year and collection of food waste in 2024.
It would be great to have a standard list of items that could be recycled across New Zealand, Vinsen said. It would give consumers certainty, and push manufacturers to use recyclable packaging.
It would help if the Government also required all plastic packaging to have 30 per cent recycled content.
The Transforming Recycling plan is a good first step, councillor Rob Vinsen says. Photo / Bevan Conley
"I wouldn't like to see us collect so much plastic that it couldn't be handled by the current processors," Vinsen said.
"Plastics recycling needs a bit more demand."
The demand for glass was good, he said. O-I Glass in Auckland took it all and would like more.
The container deposit/return scheme could get recycling rates for beverage containers up to 85 per cent as planned, but it might need fine-tuning, Vinsen said.
"It looks like there needs to be around 30c a container put on retail, because the cost of actually handling that is around 6c a container, plus GST.
"I can see that there could be a 20 per cent increase in cost of some of those things."
Plastic milk bottles have been excluded from the scheme, because they are well recycled.
Under the plan, food waste collection would happen at kerbside everywhere by 2030. It would be required for businesses, which contribute 25 per cent of food that goes to landfill.
Whanganui food waste composting business Easy Earth collects food waste from local business Honest Kitchen, where each chef works with a "pig bucket" for waste, cleared daily to feed animals.
Other food waste goes into a lined plastic bin and is collected weekly by Easy Earth.
Meyerhoff doesn't believe the kitchen wastes a third of the food it handles.
The Honest Kitchen doesn't waste much food, business development manager Charlie Meyerhoff says. Photo / Bevan Conley
"We only use fresh and seasonal ingredients, and the way [owner Karen Sewell] designs the menu, the food has multiple uses."
Thompson and the Whanganui Kai Hub believe any food edible by humans should be eaten by humans. The next best use is pig food; only whatever is left should be composted.
The hub works with five local businesses to distribute their excess food to 14 community organisations.
"We have actually moved about nine tonnes of food in the last few months," Thompson said.
Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre trustee Graham Pearson has been looking forward to having product stewardship in place.
But he wonders who will pay to transport recyclables to market, and how money will be handled in the container deposit/return scheme.
Recycling was well down the list of desirable consumer actions, he said. Reducing consumption came first, and reusing next.
"People want to recycle. It's easy - chuck it in the bin and send it off and save the world. It's better not to buy the plastic thing in the first place."
Like Vinsen, he's pleased what can be recycled will become standard across New Zealand.
"We are often hunting around for markets for things. It will be really good if it's all organised and streamlined," he said.
