This tax is meant to encourage the containment of human activities and in some cases the return of land and waters to a natural or more natural condition. It will also encourage 'treading lightly' on the environment. Because humans depend so much on the use of land and waters this tax is likely to only have a very slow effect. The third nature-related tax is the landcare levy on income used to create revenue for restoration work. The depletable energy tax is designed to trigger a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
Energy needs to be taxed differently from materials.
The purpose of energy taxation is to discourage the use the use of fossil fuels. Also energy cannot be perpetually recycled, unlike materials. So it is most practical to tax energy as it enters the economy rather than as it leaves. The philosophy applied here is that it is the extraction of resources from nature and their return as wastes or pollution that is the problem and not the holding of resource stocks in the economy. So the suite of materials taxes are designed to block the return of wastes to nature either through conscious disposal or accidental or deliberate dissipation.