The Green Party says it will seek to have a "Minister for Zero Waste" in the next government, as the fallout from Labour's policy purge continues.
It follows a Government announcement on Monday that it would roll back a number of policies aimed at reducing emissions, including one that would defer work on a container return scheme that would provide small refunds for returning containers.
A Government statement said it would likely add a "small cost" to the average household and it didn't want to impose additional costs on families at the moment.
The Greens hoped the new role, if implemented, would focus on "avoiding waste to landfill and increasing materials reuse and recycling".
Green Party environment spokeswoman Eugenie Sage said the role was needed because the "current Labour Cabinet is unwilling to take the most basic actions to reduce plastic pollution and avoid waste going to landfill".
“A beverage container return scheme is win-win for people and nature. Avoiding plastic pollution and reducing waste costs for councils and communities is a 'bread and butter' issue."
She said the Green Party couldn't see any "sound reason" why Labour had "kicked the recyclable can down the road" on the issue.
“A beverage container return scheme is hugely popular, so it cannot have been to score popularity points. The benefits far outweighed the costs, so it cannot have been for budget reasons. And the cost implications of the scheme for households are small, so it cannot have been for cost of living reasons."
She said a "well-designed" beverage container return scheme would prevent an estimated 1.7 million plastic and glass bottles, cartons and aluminium cans ending up in landfills, or as litter or pollution.
Fair Go’s Gill Higgins finds out how much recycling from the publicly funded bins ends up at the dump. (Source: Fair Go)
She said a Zero Waste Minister would support "community initiatives, encouraging reuse and refillable systems and the recovery, reuse, and recycling of materials across the economy from the building and construction sector to manufacturing and agriculture".
Earlier this week, Fair Go revealed that the vast majority of mixed recycling collected from public bins ended up in landfill.
The public place mixed recycling bins - ones that accept a mix of paper, plastic, tins, and sometimes bottles - are currently provided by about 40 city and district councils and are found on streets and in parks.
Some councils admitted to 100% of its mixed public mixed recycling ending up in landfill. Many other councils said at least 80% gets dumped.
Yesterday, Te Pāti Māori called for Climate Change Minister James Shaw's resignation over the policy reprioritisation, saying he had failed to do his job. Shaw said he believed more could be done as minister than by abandoning the role.
Regarding Sage's comment on, in her view, the Government's unwillingness to address plastic pollution and waste to landfill, a spokesperson for Environment Minister David Parker said the reusable plastic bags ban "meant 1 billion fewer plastic bags have ended in landfill", and the first tranche of the plastic ban — for single-use plastic items like drink stirrers and cotton buds — came into effect last July.
The spokesperson said the second tranche would come into effect on July 1, and would take plastic straws, produce labels and bags, and tableware out of circulation.
"Tranche 3 is planned for mid 2025 (that will address all other PVC and polystyrene food and beverage packaging). The estimate is that more than 2 billion single-use plastic items will not go into landfills or the environment each year once the bans are in place."
They said work on standardising kerbside recycling was also underway with an announcement coming "soon".
That was part of a series of other steps the Government had taken in the area.
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