I’m old enough to remember PTA parents and Scout masters driving old cars around neighbourhoods as apparently delighted unpaid children threw bottles onto homemade trailers. Let’s hope we don’t have to endure it again.
Before kerbside collection and when most of us didn’t have cars, bottle drives made sense. However, nostalgia for partly-refundable deposits paid on collected containers shouldn’t be substitute for more cost efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable recycling in modern times.
I was pleased to see the results of nationwide poll, conducted by the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (NZBCSD) ShapeNZ research panel, showing Kiwis can see past an initially attractive idea to bring back container deposits. Most people want to stick with kerbside recycling and beef up recycling levels by putting more recycling bins in public places.
Don’t you love the stunning commonsense of it all?
The spectre of manufacturers and retailers having to set up and operate costly new national network of collection centres is being advocated by some as an add-on to the Green Party’s private member’s Waste Minimisation Bill. Container deposit legislation (CDL) would impose mandatory deposit on containers, like bottles, at retail – and provide for part refund when consumers take them back to the point of sale or new collection centres.
I hope any Parliamentary support for new CDL-forced charge evaporates like the public’s when MPs consider the more efficient and lower cost alternatives.
It would have been easy for CDL advocate to slip single question into national poll asking if people support or oppose CDL. Like ShapeNZ they would have found 45 percent for, 33 percent oppose, 19 percent neutral.
But when you walk people through the alternatives and costs, nostalgia gives way to commonsense: 60 percent of New Zealanders want to pay either nothing or as little as five cents extra as container deposit scheme cost – level believed to be uneconomic for it.
Instead, 84 percent prefer using kerbside collections and having more bins in public places than being forced to pay an extra charge. When asked “would you personally be prepared to pay extra for products to cover the deposit required by CDL”, 45 percent say “no”, 40 percent “yes” and 15 percent “don’t know”.
Even among Green Party voters – the strongest advocates for CDL – support for it falls below 50 percent when they’re asked to pay. majority of voters for the main parties in Parliament all oppose CDL, along with undecided voters.
Of course, the Parliament should be concerned about packaging waste.
New Zealanders buy over 670,000 tonnes of packaging every year, and re-cycle about half of it. Ninety-five percent of people have access to facilities to recycle paper, glass, cans and plastics numbered 1 and 2, and 77 percent of councils offer households kerbside recycling service.
While CDL advocates say their system will provide financial incentive for returning products or packaging to centralised facility or to the point of sale, the packaging industry says it can further improve recycling rates by putting more recycling bins where they are most needed. No one is going to run bottle drive at rock concert or national park, but people will use more cost-efficient bins there.
Modern packaging materials also lend themselves to more efficient production and re-use and recycling.
However, Kiwis are prepared to support one new waste tax: levy on the more than three million tonnes of solid waste going to landfills each year. Most of this waste is not packaging, but construction and organic. Sixty-seven percent support the Green Bill’s provisions for new $25 per tonne levy, to be paid by those taking solid waste to landfill.
The NZBCSD argues the new revenue from levy should be used for cost-efficient proposals to spark new recycling and re-use ventures, turning waste mountains into potential profits. That will also do much better by the environment and the commonsense Kiwis who know their special quality of life will be protected by it.
Peter Neilson is chief executive of the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development.
www.nzbcsd.org.nz www.shapenz.org.nz
