Auckland Mayor Phil Goff welcomes the announcement of a container return scheme recommendation and efforts to standardise kerbside recycling across the country.
“Alongside my councillors, I’ve been advocating for years for the government to introduce a container return scheme to reduce waste and help protect our environment, so this consultation is welcomed news for Auckland and the country.
“The rubbish bin should be the last resort. The container return scheme will get more single use containers out of our public place rubbish bins and reduce litter, as it creates a convenient recycling option for people when they’re out and about.
“Adding value to recyclables will motivate people to ensure these materials stay out of the rubbish bin and get properly recycled. An estimated 10 per cent of our household rubbish bins in Auckland are actually materials that could be recycled.
“Each household in Auckland generates an average of 225 kilos of recycling a year. The deposit on single use containers can turn into great pocket money for enterprising kids. Returning cans, drink bottles and other recyclables helped fund many summer hobbies for young people when I was growing up,” he said.
According to Environment Minister David Parker, “More than two billion drinks are sold every year in New Zealand. Less than half of these containers are recycled, meaning that over a billion containers end up as litter, are stockpiled, or sent to landfills every year.
“With a container return scheme in place, we can increase our recycling rate for beverage containers to between 85 per cent and 90 per cent.”
Standardisation welcome by Aucklanders
Out of the 135,000 tonnes of recycling Aucklanders roll to the kerb a year, around 35 percent is glass, which can be recycled infinitely, and up to 10 percent is plastic and aluminium.
Auckland is fortunate to have the volume and technology to process more types of recycling. Getting to a common recycling standard across the country will reduce wishcycling and increase confidence in knowing which items go in the kerbside recycling bin.
Aucklanders are used to recycling their oat milk, soy milk, and other liquid paperboard packaging that smaller Councils might not currently be able to recycle. As we move to a common process around the country, it will be important that it increases recycling abilities, rather than limiting regions to the lowest standard everywhere.
Food scraps brings huge potential for our environment
Auckland Council General Manager for Waste Solutions, Parul Sood, shares the benefits of the food scraps service, saying, “The kerbside food scraps service makes it easier for families to take climate action and reduce methane emissions. Food scraps are up to half the weight of the rubbish we collect in Auckland.
“Across New Zealand, I understand we waste more than $1 billion on our grocery bills by throwing away food we bought and didn’t eat. That’s around three shopping trolleys per family, according to Love Food Hate Waste.
“Next year, every household in urban Auckland will get a caddy to use in the kitchen to help them collect scraps and a kerbside bin to put them in. The food scraps will be processed using anaerobic digestion to make clean energy and fertiliser to grow more food.
“The service is a great complement to home composting because you can use it for meat and dairy scraps that you might not want in your home compost system. Or, for things worms won’t eat, like processed foods, citrus, or onions,” shares Ms Sood.
Getting closer to zero waste
Any incentives we can give for people to save valuable materials brings us closer to a circular economy.
Recycling is great, but not needing single use products is even better.
The Ministry for the Environment has made big strides towards our ultimate goal of zero waste. Their support made possible an upgrade to Auckland’s recycling facility to keep more plastics recycled here in New Zealand, with the second phase of that project (for paper and cardboard recycling) coming up in June. New Community Recycling Centres are opening in Onehunga and Western Springs later this year as well with support from central government.
