Watch our waste

Reduce, recycle, reuse and repair whenever possible. Make sure pollution is minimised and contained. Polluters should pay for the damage they cause. Composting can reduce household waste and feeds our gardens.

The IME estimates that 30-50% of food or 1.2 to 2 billion tons of food produced is wasted (25). It ‘blames the staggering new figures in its analysis of unnecessarily strict sell-by-dates, buy-one-getone-free and Western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with poor engineering and agricultural practises, inadequate infrastructure and poor storage’. It claims that up to 30% of the United Kingdom’s vegetable crops are never harvested because they do not meet the exacting standards for physical characteristics (such as size and colour). ‘Globally, retailers generate 1.6 million tons of food waste annually in this way.’ Certainly these wasteful practices must be eliminated and better ways found to distribute this food to poorer communities.

In New Zealand the solid waste that is sent to landfill each year amounts to 1.6 tons per person (39). Much of this could be recycled and composting could reduce household waste by 30%. Municipalities should be investing in power generation equipment to turn the methane from this waste into power.

The annual Auckland non-organic goods collection is positive as many items are redistributed to new owners with a use for them rather than ending up in landfill. Similarly, a free cycling initiative in the United States is an online service which redistributes goods that are no longer needed (2). Recyclebank, which is a loyalty programme for people who recycle frequently, is another worthwhile US initiative (2). By attaching an electronic tag to the recycling bin, the company measures how much a customer is recycling, and the customer is then rewarded with points which can be redeemed at various local businesses. Local government pays Recyclebank to implement the system and saves money from reduced landfill costs. It creates jobs and is good for the environment.

Be careful with the use of chemicals as the effect on the environment is invariably detrimental and their safe disposal must also be factored in. Fertilisers used in agriculture cause imbalances in the soil with rising nitrogen levels which wash into our rivers and oceans. ‘They encourage algal blooms and deplete oxygen levels to the point that nothing else can survive. So while in this case significant economic benefit comes from higher food production, significant economic loss comes from loss of drinking water, loss of fisheries and dead rivers. This eutrophication loss is estimated to be as much as $2.2 billion in the US in 2009’ (2). As many as 90% (7) of our rivers in the supposedly 100% pure NZ are polluted.

We have become a throwaway society: instead of fixing things it is cheaper to throw them away and replace. Manufacturers now make it difficult to open merchandise for repairs. This means more profits for the companies concerned but such practices are detrimental to the environment. If we followed the polluter pays principle, far fewer goods would end up in landfills as the quality of goods would improve.

Packaging causes a huge waste problem although much is recycled. If manufacturers added in the disposal costs of packaging to the price of the item, it would be different. Surely reusable containers make sense. Perhaps if we become less brand conscious we would accept the same goods in more modest, simpler packaging with fewer layers. Perhaps we need to have less variation in container types and different companies could reuse the same recycled container (without having to remake it from recycled material) – they could simply add their label. Suppliers of goods could design better packaging that is also easier to recycle in many instances.

Take the simple plastic bag. We make about 500 billion per year (40). In South Africa it caused so much litter it was called the new national flower! Two changes were introduced and have helped: consumers must pay for each bag and the thickness of the bag has been increased to 80 microns so that it can be recycled.