Fitzsimons Jeanette: Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3584] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I congratulate my colleague Nandor and all the other Green members who have worked on the waste bill over the years. It has been passed from hand to hand. One of the things Rod Donald was looking forward to was picking it up after the election when Mike Ward lost his seat. Nandor has done it and we have finally had the bill introduced. I thank colleagues in the House who are supporting this bill going to a select committee. Although they recognise that some things in the bill are debatable and some things will need to be changed they are prepared to have that debate and work constructively on it at the select committee rather than just trash it for political reasons. I thank the Labour Party New Zealand First and the Maori Party for their support for us having that debate in a democratic way which is what Parliament is about. 
This is actually a very overdue bill. It reminds me of when 30 years ago I set up the first local authority recycling scheme to actually make a profit for a council. That was in Devonport in 1976. I thought naively at the time that once it had been demonstrated that a local authority recycling scheme could make a profit for a council and a community one would not have to do anything more—that everyone else would pick it up and run with it. Well nobody ever really did to the same extent but a lot of non-governmental organisations private groups and charities around the country such as Xtreme Waste and the others that Nandor mentioned are now doing a superb job in a difficult regulatory and legislative environment. 
In Devonport we managed to keep two-thirds of waste out of the landfill and re-route it into paper recycling steel recycling aluminium recycling tin can recycling and with the organic waste compost making. It was highly supported by the public partly because it kept the local tip open for years when it otherwise would have been closed and people would have had to drive their waste to Rosedale Road which was a lot further. 
We learnt a lot of things from that project. We learnt that design is the key to minimising waste. Once somebody has made a product that has five different incompatible materials in it there is nothing we can do to reuse or recycle it. Therefore we need extended producer responsibility to make sure that products are designed to be reused and recycled. We learnt that the community—contrary to what everybody told us—was very keen to cooperate with a scheme like this but there needs to be a system to cooperate with. People cannot recycle their waste if nobody is providing a recycling system. We learnt that there are jobs profitability and money in recycling industries but that they need certain economies of scale in order to work. Therefore there need to be incentives for people to use them. We have learnt over the years I believe that volunteerism on its own is not enough and that there need to be incentives and some level of compulsion. 
I am surprised that National which in the past has advocated a waste authority and which advocates market mechanisms is opposed to the market mechanism of a waste levy just as it is opposed to the market mechanism of a carbon charge. Apparently it wants the careful to have to subsidise the waste of the careless. It reminds me of the debate that occurred when I introduced the Energy Efficiency Bill. National said it was Stalinist to set minimum energy performance standards for products. Well we have had huge changes in energy efficiency in New Zealand as a result of those minimum energy performance standards. Consumers are much better off because they are getting quality goods and the number of petajoules saved is very substantial compared with the cost. 
The Business Council for Sustainable Development told me a while back that it strongly supports the levy powers and is keen to see the bill proceed though it does not agree with every part of it. The select committee will undoubtedly get rid of some of the more draconian details and we are open to working with colleagues on that. There is no doubt at all that this bill can take us forward environmentally and economically. I commend it to the House.