Mackey Moana: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17600] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 As far as I am aware we have two Supplementary Order Papers on this part—one in the name of Dr Russel Norman and one in the name of Nicky Wagner. I think they are largely very similar. Has this one superseded the member’s one? 
Jacqui Dean 
: Yes. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: OK. It is all go on the Supplementary Order Paper front tonight but I am sure it will all work out just fine in the end. 
One of the things that struck the Local Government and Environment Committee members when they were hearing submissions was that we often asked submitters who work in this area or who work for territorial authorities whether they knew the exact volumes that we were dealing with when we talked about waste and different waste streams and whether we knew what percentage of those were being recycled collected or reused. Consistently the answer we got back was that they had some idea and they could give us a ballpark figure but that there were severe limitations on their own ability to collect that information. Because a lot of it came down to an individual level and to a household level they were not able to correctly ascertain how much they were collecting. Because of the lack of product stewardship schemes in some areas they did not know how much was going out there and how much was expected to be collected at the end. As I said although they could make educated guesses as to exactly how much they were dealing with they were not really sure and of course it makes it very difficult when people are forming a waste minimisation plan if they do not know how much they are dealing with how much they are potentially dealing with and how much is likely metaphorically to come out of the woodwork once they start putting these things into place. 
The select committee decided that it would not be appropriate to wait and get all this information before getting things into action. We thought the two had to go alongside each other. But certainly this is a very important part of the bill because this really is a large unknown in some areas and of course we know much more about some waste streams than others. There are some waste streams that perhaps in the past may not have been prioritised so much in terms of collection. We may not have considered it a problem that we sent a lot of those waste streams straight to landfill without recording it. But certainly without this information it is very difficult to really have an impact on waste minimisation initiatives in New Zealand. 
As the previous speaker Nicky Wagner said we were concerned that we wanted to make this measure the least onerous possible on the people who were doing it. We wanted to make it as simple as possible to collect this information but I think it would be fair to say that around the select committee there was general agreement that this was something that did need to happen and that if we were really going to be able to make strides in this area then we needed to be able to collect this kind of information. 
So putting on more expectations to collect information is not something that a select committee takes lightly but as we can see from other areas where we have needed to do this it pays off in the end. We have managed to come up with a system that is as light-handed as possible whilst ensuring that we start to capture some of the information that for a very very long time has been missing and for a very very long time has required both private industry and territorial authorities largely to work on hearsay and gut feeling in some areas or to take this cost upon themselves and try to figure it out for themselves. I think we have done a good job on this part of the bill.