The Government is proposing a new recycling and waste management scheme that would give New Zealanders 20c every time they recycle a plastic bottle.
Environment Minister David Parker says the aim is to encourage people to hand in their single use plastic bottles.
The scheme won’t be rolled out until 2025, but it would see a 20c increase in price for drinks in single use plastic bottles, which is given back to consumers when they return their bottles.
Similar schemes existed for glass bottles in the past and were a staple of many a Kiwi kids’ childhood, allowing keen collectors to supplement their pocket money with bottle returns, before the system was shelved in the 1980s.
The current proposal could see the equivalent of drink machines installed around the country which instead of dispensing drinks receive bottles and dole out cash.
Parker told Q+A with Jack Tame that in Queensland, where a similar buy-back scheme has been running for such a while, “people get their deposits back”.
The Government says every year New Zealanders generate more than 17 tonnes of waste, and send more than 13 million of those to landfill.
“Our rates of recycling in New Zealand are about half of what they do in other countries that do it better.”
Among the suggestions is standardising curbside collections across the country – the aim is to reduce confusion over what can be recycled, and also help businesses design packaging that can be recycled anywhere in NZ.
“This is something that councils are asking for too,” Parker says.
“At the moment different rules apply in different parts of the country and it’s very hard for the councils to run good educational campaigns to help people understand what should be recycled and what shouldn’t. And as a consequence there’s a lot of rubbish contaminating the recycling, and there’s a lot of recycling going in the rubbish.
“So standardising that nationwide will mean that it’s clearer for people and easier for them to do the right thing.”
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