New Zealand introduced the Waste Minimisation Act (WMA) in 2008 after being drawn from the ballot in 2006, having been placed there by the Green Party. It passed into legislation with the support of all parties and is expected to change the landscape of waste in New Zealand. By Marion Short.

With it came a waste disposal levy (effective from July 1, 2009), product stewardship, defined responsibilities for territorial authorities and a contestable Waste Minimisation Fund.

No sooner had the dust settled on the WMA that it was announced the waste sector was included in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), despite a number of submissions and appearances before the select committee. The government’s approach is ‘all gases, all inclusive’, with a target of a 10% to 20% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2020.

The NZ waste sector is responsible for somewhere around 2.7% of total emissions and is the only sector to have reduced emissions, with a 31% decrease from 1990 to 2008, despite increasing volumes of waste. Other sectors had increased considerably: electricity up 122% and transport up 63%.

The financial impact of the proposed NZ ETS outlined at the WasteMINZ conference in October last year was considerable and as you can imagine created a reasonable amount of noise in the sector.

Using an advocacy coalition framework, the ‘WasteMINZ Landfill and Residual Waste sector group’ (LRWSG) together with other key stakeholders, including Local Government New Zealand, initiated a dialogue with the Ministry for the Environment (MfE).

The goal was to establish a technical advisory group which included “experts from the waste sector” to work with MfE to develop the methodologies for the draft content of the Climate Change (Waste) Regulations 2010. The view was promoted that by engaging with the waste sector to create draft regulations it would seem logical that the consultation and implementation of the final regulations will be easier (submissions close July 23).

The advocacy campaign was successful and the NZ ETS Waste Technical Advisory Group (Waste TAG) was formed, including two memebers of the LRWSG – Simonne Eldridge from Tonkin & Taylor and Ian Kennedy from Transpacific Industries Group (NZ).

The aim of the regulations is to provide disposal facility operators with a clear and logical methodology for reporting their emissions. In April the Waste TAG submitted a technical report to MfE providing recommendations on methodologies for emission estimation and emission factors.

New Zealand currently has 53 registered municipal solid waste facilities. Even the large modern, well-designed landfills with gas management systems will incur additional direct and indirect costs under the NZ ETS. That is the premise of the NZ ETS – polluters pay!

Positively, the draft regulations propose an emission factor and methodology that is considered reasonable for New Zealand conditions, plus provide the opportunity to implement a verified Unique Emission Factor (UEF) if that provides a financial benefit.

It is proposed that for waste and synthetic gases, voluntary reporting will be introduced from January 1 next year, mandatory reporting from January 1 the year after and full obligations will commence from January 1 in 2013. Closed landfills are excluded.

Marion Short is chief executive officer of WasteMINZ, New Zealand’s waste management association. This is part of a regular series of updates designed to ensure we cover key developments in all jurisdictions.

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