Wagner Nicky: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Wagner Nicky: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:649;Page:18051] 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I rise to support the Waste Minimisation Bill. It has been a long journey but we have finally got to Part 1. As members know National voted against this bill at its first reading. We voted against it because we believed it was excessively detailed and overly prescriptive. We voted against it because it tended to focus on how things should be done rather than the outcomes we needed to achieve. We were also concerned about excessive costs in terms of compliance and enforcements and layers and layers of new bureaucracy. However during the select committee process the original bill was gutted. This Waste Minimisation Bill is completely and comprehensively reworked. National now supports the bill particularly now that we have been through a rigorous process of considering Supplementary Order Papers and because the bill’s provisions are now mostly reasonable and rational and more important because it will be good for our environment. 
New Zealanders are conscious that the disposal of waste however carefully managed does harm to our environment. Although modern landfills utilise new technologies to protect the receiving environment we still need to minimise the volume of waste that we dispose of. Even transporting that waste is destructive and increases our carbon footprint. There are enormous benefits to gain from better utilising our waste stream: economic benefits from recovering valuable resources social benefits from providing jobs and cultural benefits from a cleaner and greener environment. 
The Local Government and Environment Committee worked hard on the definitions required for this bill and we got it right in most instances. There was a large amount of debate about the definition of waste and it seemed very difficult to find a definition that was neither too wide nor too narrow. We finally decided on a definition that included not only anything that had been disposed of and discarded which is probably what most people think of when they are describing waste but also anything that was no longer required for its original purpose and which but for commercial or other waste minimisation activities would have been disposed of or discarded. 
But on reflection our definition included resources in the waste stream that could be reused recycled or recovered even if they had never entered the waste stream and this proved to be a problem. Since the bill had been reported back we had representations from several organisations including the Scrap Metal Recycling Association of New Zealand organic and green waste collectors and paper and plastic recyclers highlighting unintended consequences of the original wider definition. They believed that the wider definition could actually create disincentives for recycling and could jeopardise New Zealand’s significant export of waste—or resources depending on how we define it. 
When we designed the Waste Minimisation Bill we aimed to encourage the extraction of valuable commodities from the waste stream but it seemed that the wider definition could have perverse effects as it included material that was never intended for the waste stream. There had already been a court case over the ramifications of a wider definition of waste because a recycler of paper which should have been rewarded for minimising the waste stream was actually disadvantaged under the wider definition. The recyclers were also concerned that the wider definition could unnecessarily increase administrative and compliance costs for recycling businesses and could hinder the bill’s objective of encouraging waste minimisation activities. Furthermore it was pointed out that any suggestion that recyclables such as scrap metal were considered waste by the New Zealand Government had the potential to influence importers from other countries and New Zealand exports could have become subject to more rigorous import controls. 
I came to the conclusion that unless we reworked the definition of “waste” in the bill we could cause problems for the people and organisations that had been the most proactive in the minimisation of waste and that had spearheaded the recovery of valuable resources from the waste stream. To minimise waste we need to attract businesses and operators to work in this area not kick them in the shins when they have been proactive. I therefore proposed Supplementary Order Paper 219 which dealt with a narrow definition that excluded recyclables and recoverable resources. It would have solved the recyclers’ problem and ensured that those pioneer recyclers and resource-recovery businesses such as the scrap-metal merchants paper recyclers and green-waste collectors were not disadvantaged but it would have meant that the bill did not cover and actually excluded recyclables. That had further complications and ramifications in terms of how local government could fulfil its obligations in waste minimisation. 
After the last member’s day Russel Norman and I got together to work on a definition we thought would get an even better balance. Over the adjournment Russel Norman with the help of the Ministry for the Environment and local government representatives and I have come up with a compromise which is Supplementary Order Paper 223 that I think everyone can live with. Therefore I have withdrawn my Supplementary Order Paper 219 and support the new compromise definition Supplementary Order Paper 223. I look forward to both the recyclers and local government getting on with the job. Thank you.