The Te kawe i te haepapa para: Taking responsibility for our waste consultation on a new Aotearoa New Zealand waste strategy and legislation is wide ranging, but needs to go further.
We need a transformational national waste strategy and waste legislation. We need to reduce our impacts on nature by avoiding waste and recovering and reusing more materials, and we need to protect our climate by reducing emissions caused by waste.
It's really important that the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) hears from as many people as possible about how the proposed strategy and legislation could be improved, and what's missing.
Submissions close Friday 10 December. We've put together the following submission guide to help you make a submission through MfE's website.
Green Party Submission Guide
- If you're into the policy side of things and want to read up on the background and context for this consultation, MfE's consultation documents are available here. Otherwise, go straight to the submission form.
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Fill out your details, and consent to your submission being released (you can choose to make it anonymous, or have certain parts redacted).
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You do not have to answer all of the consultation questions (Part 1 - 3). Feel free to choose specific questions, or simply skip to the end and put all of your comments into the additional information section.
- Below are some key areas where the Green Party believes the strategy and legislation could be more ambitious. Feel free to copy and paste as much of these points as you want. Unique submissions are always better, so if possible, add some of your own thoughts, ideas or experience where you can. For instance you could comment on how waste could be better managed where you live, or things that you are particularly happy about, or frustrated by, when it comes to managing our waste in Aotearoa.
Te Tiriti partnership
Throughout the waste strategy and legislation, I would like to see more recognition of the relationship of mana whenua as kaitiaki of their taonga and rohe. As we reduce waste we need to support Māori efforts to ensure culturally appropriate management of waste and protect sites such as customary food gathering areas and wāhi tapu. I would like to see a Te Tiriti o Waitangi-led waste management strategy that works in partnership with Māori as equal partners. This would include:
- consultation that is culturally appropriate and sufficiently resourced and recognises that community needs vary at the whānau, hapū level and consultation needs to occur at a similar level and in genuine partnership from the start.
- ensuring that Māori have effective representation on decision making and advisory bodies.
- active protection of Māori rights and interests, including land and taonga.
- ensuring that outcomes are distributed evenly, including risks, opportunities and benefits such as where new resource recovery centres are located for example.
Avoiding and reducing waste
I would like the Minister for the Environment to put more emphasis on the responsibility of manufacturers, retailers and consumers to avoid and reduce the generation of waste at source. This circular economy approach should include:
- establishing a new zero waste agency focused on resource efficiency and avoiding waste.
- establishing material flow accounts to understand how we use materials and resources in what we produce, consume, and export.
- more support for sustainable design so we reduce the raw materials and energy used to manufacture products.
- streamlining the process for establishing product stewardship schemes so that manufacturers, retailers and consumers take more responsibility for products over their whole lifecycle.
- establishing more sector-wide product stewardship schemes to incentivise progress towards each product component being repairable, reusable, recyclable or biodegradable;
- rapid progress on new mandatory product stewardship schemes for electronic waste and implementing a container return scheme for beverage containers including to support refillable glass container use;
- effective product labelling standards for durability and reparability.
- law changes to provide a comprehensive right to repair that is integrated with the Consumer Guarantees Act.
- more public education and advocacy by government agencies to help businesses and households avoid and reduce waste.
- a work programme to increase materials recovery and recycling on farm and phase out farm dumps.
Recovering materials
The Climate Change Commission has recommended reducing biogenic methane emissions from waste to at least 40 per cent below 2017 levels by 2035. To enable this, I would like the Minister for the Environment to recognise the urgent need to reduce organic and food waste to landfill. This includes to:
- aim for zero food waste to landfill by phasing out the disposal of food and green waste to landfill by 2030;
- recognise the co-benefits of composting including providing farmers and growers with alternatives to synthetic nitrogen fertiliser;
- increase funding and other support to community organisations such as food rescue groups and resource recovery centres so they can scale up, avoid waste to landfill and support more good jobs;
- regulate or set standards for source separation on construction and demolition sites to recover recyclable materials and avoid waste to landfills.
I would like the Minister for the Environment to:
- ensure that local authorities continue to receive at least 50% of the landfill levy and do more with their communities to avoid and minimise waste. This includes for example, standardising kerbside collection and composting facilities, more resource recovery centres, and better waste minimisation planning.
- work to ensure that the reform of the resource management system including the new spatial planning legislation helps to avoid waste and facilitate recovery of recyclable materials.
- establish a national licensing system for waste collectors, resource recovery operators, recyclers, organic waste processors and others and for disposal sites. This would help to improve standards across the sector and reduce the risk of health and environmental impacts.
Remediation of closed landfills
I would like more explicit recognition of the social, environmental, economic and capital costs of maintaining and remediating current and former landfills. We need a clear strategy and policy for dealing with closed and abandoned landfills so we avoid any repeat of the Fox landfill disaster.
- Upload any supporting documents that you want MfE to see (e.g. things that illustrate the points you've made, examples from overseas, etc.) OR simply hit Continue to send your submission.
- Extra for awesome people: encourage a friend, colleague or family member to make a submission as well!