More rubbish is being dumped at landfills and less is being recycled despite the introduction of a fee on household waste, a government report has found.
Introduced in 2009, the levy requires landfill operators to pay $10 per tonne for rubbish dumped on their sites.
However, only 11% of New Zealand’s more than 400 landfills pay the levy.
The report, released yesterday, says 16.4 % more rubbish has been sent to tips since the levy was last reviewed in 2014 and 6.3% less rubbish has been diverted from landfills for recycling.
The levy had raised $192 million that has gone into programmes to reduce waste.
Associate Environment Minister Scott Simpson says it remains an important tool to minimise waste but needs improvement.
The report recommends the Government consider broadening the levy so it applies to more of the 89% of rubbish tips currently exempt.
It also recommends assessing whether different charges should be set depending on what waste is being thrown away, such as setting a higher fee to dispose of more toxic materials.
Mr Scott said levies had been effective in reducing waste in many countries, while New Zealand’s levy had already funded many waste-minimisation projects. This included giving grants of almost $20 million to businesses this month to help them fund projects aimed at reusing old tyres.
But an alternative report by consultants Eunomia, undertaken on behalf of local councils and recycling companies, says up to $200 million could be generated for the Government each year by raising the levy. This could be done by hiking the fee from $10 per tonne for all rubbish types to $140 per tonne for wood and plastic wastes and $15 per tonne for concrete, bricks and soil.
The higher levy would also better incentivise recycling, divert 3 million tonnes of rubbish from landfill each year and create 9000 jobs in a $500 million per annum boost to the economy, the report said.
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Comments
Would someone please ban the idiocy of hiring consultants to generate useless reports? Yeah, lets tax the tipping of plastic and wood waste. We can hire an army of people to sort and weigh every load that appears at the tip. Just pure nonsense.
How about some positive process like paying for each delivery of sorted recycleables to a tip or transfer station? Reward positive behaviour, it works with dogs, it might work with people.