Hobbs Marian: Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill — First Reading 
Hobbs Marian: Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3586] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise to support the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill going to a select committee. I think waste minimisation is an incredibly serious issue and I am very grateful that it has come forward in a member’s bill to be discussed. I feel very sad about both of the speeches from the National Party because it is not good enough to say there is an issue then reject the opportunity to discuss it at a select committee. There are some issues inside the bill that I would love to tease out and go through and I will talk about some of them there. 
Waste minimisation is an area where we as a Government have been working. I just heard Nicky Wagner say that it was quite important to use a good example from British Columbia. That is something that should be discussed at a select committee. We can have a look and analyse whether there are simpler ways of doing it. I think this is a serious issue and we have the opportunity to do that. That is why Labour members are supporting the bill going to a select committee. 
Waste is an issue on which the Government has been doing some work. Yes I accept that the strategy was voluntary. For me that is the style in which I used to work—that is we start we gather momentum and we move onwards. I think the momentum is gathering and work was being done. It will be found if the Ministry for the Environment becomes involved that quite a lot of work is being done on product stewardship. We have been teasing out the ideas contained in this particular bill. Progress has been made. There are some simple things about agricultural and farm waste—be they some of the poisons in farm sheds or be they things like plastic silage wrap which is being collected. Work has been done on electronic waste and it is growing. The people from Vodafone and HP New Zealand have done some tremendous work. 
Work is being done on packaging. I want to tell members something about that because people spend a lot of time saying packaging is just stupid and nothing has happened. Let me give an example of something that came out of design. The packaging accord people always have a prize-giving at the end of the year. About 2 or 3 years ago a young man who worked for Cadbury’s designed something to reduce by a third the amount of packaging around chocolate Easter eggs. Three trucks could be filled instead of four or two trucks instead of three—with less petrol being used—to get the goods from Dunedin to the markets in Auckland. It was really excellent work. That is clever design. That is the idea around waste minimisation. The packaging accord was going out of its way to promote that work. 
These are all encouraging moves but we need to move further. We need to offer a few more rewards and incentives. I heard Nandor Tanczos ask whether we accept that waste minimisation is a problem. Yes we do. Do we accept that economic instruments have their place? Yes we do. Do we accept that businesses need support? Yes we do. He also asked whether we have been working on that. I recognise that some industries ride on the coat-tails of others. I got involved in the used oil negotiations—I will never forget it—and then the glass negotiations and they were horrendous. We had business people running those negotiations not bureaucrats not politicians. We had people from industry—such as the man in charge of Griffin’s—running those things and trying to do some work to get through negotiations about how we manage glass. There was a history there of fairness in business procedures that was causing some of the blockages. But let me make the point that we have to have a furnace for glass in the South Island and I draw people’s attention to that issue. If we are taking all our glass from Invercargill to Auckland that is a waste of energy. So again we have to be clever in how we design the process. 
I have a bit of a problem with having a national agency and I need to work my way through that. I really want to listen. I know that it was put up by the working committee in 2001 but there was a feeling of central versus local and it was also about industry collaboration somehow fitting in there. A lot of people wanted to do things and they were almost didactic in their wanting to do that versus bringing others along. I know that my philosophy was playing a part there. 
I want to say also in respect of waste minimisation plans that people should go on the web and have a look at Govt3. I will give a simple example: Cabinet took its recommendations on board and all our Cabinet papers are now printed on both sides. It drives Trevor Mallard mad because he cannot read them as easily while riding his bicycle but it has cut paper usage by half. That is from the Govt3 waste minimisation plans. 
We have a problem. National gives us no way through to solving that problem. It is not enough to say there is a problem and we will do nothing about it. We have a problem and this bill is a chance to put that problem on the agenda and find some solutions.