Norman Russel William: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Norman Russel William: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17608] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Green) 
: 
 It is great to get back to Part 1 so that we can talk about the purpose of the Waste Minimisation Bill. Of course it is quite unusual for a member to be in this chair defending a bill within a few weeks of entering Parliament. Certainly I have to hit the ground running in order to do that—but this bill also has to hit the ground running. We have to hit the ground running because when it comes to waste minimisation actually we are still a long way behind. We need to create a framework to respond to the growing waste problem. This bill aims to speed up the Government’s response—and our response as a country—so that we can deal with waste and the growing waste problem. We know and we have heard here tonight about individuals councils communities and businesses that have already begun that process as best they can. There are lots of different groups across the country that are doing the right thing in terms of waste minimisation. The Ministry for the Environment has also contributed. It has made a positive contribution despite the absence of this bill and this kind of legislation. But with this bill we hope that Parliament and the Government can play catch-up. In a sense it is playing catch-up to the kinds of initiatives that communities have already initiated and we are trying to provide a bit of support to them. 
The purpose of the bill arises directly from Green Party policy. The Green Party policy on waste minimisation has been advanced through this bill by a number of members of my party. I am standing here today on the shoulders of my predecessors—the late Rod Donald who was a great campaigner on waste; Mike Ward in whose name this bill was originally put forward; and of course Nandor Tanczos who has guided this bill through the House over the last couple of years. I also add that we have had some incredibly able advisers during that period: Chris Teo-Sherrell who is now a councillor in Palmerston North Quentin Duthie who is here tonight as well as the Ministry for the Environment officials who have provided tremendous advice and support. The Green Party does not always see eye to eye with the Government on everything or with National or with other parties. Different parties do not always see eye to eye on different policies but with this bill we have collaborated with the Government the Opposition and with other parties to address the waste issues. 
We considered the purpose clause of this bill early on in our negotiations with different Ministers. The intention was to create an Act to implement the principles of the New Zealand Waste Strategy. Although the explicit reference to the strategy was removed for various reasons the Government and the Greens agreed on the purpose of the bill and streamlining the mechanisms it contained flowed from that agreed purpose. Some comments have been made here tonight about the original bill being slightly cumbersome. The Greens acknowledged those comments and we were very appreciative of the contribution from others for streamlining the bill. I think that the Government the ministry the National Party New Zealand First and other parties have contributed to making the bill much more streamlined. I thank all of them including the former Ministers for the Environment. My challenge to the Government to this Parliament and to future Governments is not to lose sight of the ideal of minimising waste to its absolute minimum. Why do we not have zero waste as our goal? This is not the end of it it is just the beginning. We look forward to collaborating with others in terms of implementing this bill and building on it in complementary ways so that we can head towards a zero-waste goal. 
The purpose of the bill is to encourage waste minimisation and to decrease waste disposal. One of the final campaigns of the late Rod Donald was to try to save the South Island’s iconic glass milk bottle. Of course the glass milk bottle is a reusable package. It is not just recyclable; it is reusable. At that time 25000 bottles were still in use but those bottles are now all history. Using this example the purpose of the bill is to protect the environment from the harm of un-reusable plastic bottles—or even worse un-recyclable mixed-material bottles; as I am sure members know some bottles are not recyclable because of their mixed materials—and at the same time provide benefits: economic environmental social and cultural. These are the benefits that arise from recycling and reusing in particular and I hope that this bill will see the return of the reusable glass milk bottle. Why not? We had it once so why cannot we have it again? The ubiquitous milk bottle! I also congratulate companies who are doing reusable bottles. We all know they are out there—Foxton Fizz and the Green Man Brewery. Producers out there are doing this now in terms of reusing bottles and not just recycling them. I think that that is a great initiative and with the passage of this bill I hope that we will see more of it. 
The purpose of the bill also contains within it a rationale for wanting to minimise waste in the first place—that is the aim is not just to deal with all the waste later; it is to minimise waste in the first instance. After all with our small population and a generous land area some people have argued that waste is not a problem for New Zealand. There are lots of places where we can go and dump it so it is not such a big deal. We can just—you know—dig holes. In fact we recently had a case in the Wairarapa where a family was simply dumping their waste into their local stream and were using it as a kind of landfill or a “waterfill” if you like. It was going down the side of the stream and then simply being carried out to sea and that is exactly the kind of thing that we do not want to do. Of course when we talk about burying waste and hiding it away that is how it seems to most of us. But that is not so to the residents of Kate Valley in Canterbury or even Happy Valley in Wellington who have to smell the waste hear it being disposed of and see it. 
One of the rationales for reducing waste in the bill is the protection of the environment from harm. The “New Zealand is big enough” argument—that is the argument that New Zealand is big enough just to dump all our waste wherever we want to dump it—implies that all waste is inert. A lot of people think that all waste is inert and harmless—as long as it is out of sight it does not matter. The problem is the tonnes of landfill methane that contribute to climate change and the leachate that pollutes our waterways. It is not just the individual items; it is the leachate that comes out of the bottom of them. I think that it is seldom understood how toxic a lot of the leachate that comes out of landfills is. We have problems in Horowhenua where the old dumps up there are leaching into the coastal environment. That is a real problem there. There are plastics that break down into smaller and smaller pieces which threaten wildlife and I am sure that people have heard about the great plastic continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We also have toxicity which is an issue that has come up just recently as the Minister mentioned earlier with compact fluorescent light bulbs. But of course the problem is batteries treated timber and electronic goods all of which have toxic waste in them like mercury. 
We have come a long way from the days of being a tidy Kiwi by not littering. Not littering is really important but it is just the beginning of a consciousness around waste. Today’s society accepts that the three R’s—reduce reuse recycle—are the goal and this bill begins the process of our law catching up with people. It is catching up with the movement from simple waste management which of course has dominated our treatment of waste to actual waste minimisation and making that the goal rather than waste management by itself. Waste minimisation especially the eventual goal of zero waste is about more than being a tidy Kiwi or even religiously following the three R’s of reduce reuse recycle. This bill seeks also to encourage the redesign of products and packaging to reduce waste even before it is created. The redesign of packaging and products I think is one of the more exciting parts of the bill. The fact that we can intervene at the design stage to mean we get less waste at the end of the whole process is great and this bill seeks to encourage the redesign of products and packaging to reduce waste even before it is created. It enables the internalisation of the costs of recovery which we heard about earlier tonight and it creates the potential to set up a situation where a fee can be applied at the beginning of a car’s life and is then returned when the car finally reaches the end of the road so to speak—there are lots of roads these days—in treatment and disposal. 
The bill also seeks to get as much organic and green waste as possible out of landfills which we know reduces greenhouse emissions. When organic waste is put into a landfill the result is that it produces methane. Methane of course is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and some of our landfills have managed to tap that methane and use it to generate power which is great. But it would be better in the first place if that organic material had not ended up in the landfill. That would be a much better option. 
I believe that the purpose of this bill is one that almost all New Zealanders would agree with and the Green Party’s policy goal tied to this bill is that we will be waste-free by 2020—would that not be great—and we want to make clear and significant progress by 2010. We believe that this legislation will facilitate us to make that progress and the bill’s purpose is to achieve that—to make that kind of progress. We have confidence that the bill will mean we will reduce waste going to landfill in the next few years and head towards a zero-waste future.