To:	Local Government and Environment Committee Bowen House, Parliament Buildings, WELLINGTON
From:	Mana Community Enterprises Spicer LandFill, Broken Hill Road, Porirua City Contact person Sonia Moore - Project Manager Ph: (04) 237 5454 [email protected]
Date:	24th August 2006
Submission:	To the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill

About Us
Part 5 - Waste disposal Levy
Part 6 - Extended producer responsibility
Part 7 - Organisational waste minimisation plans
Summary

I am writing on behalf of Mana Community Enterprises Inc. MCE is a non-profit community organisation whose primary purpose is to provide vocational rehabilitation, training and employment for mental health consumers (trainees).

MCE was established in 1996 and after the long-stay wards were closed at Porirua Hospital. It was identified early on that there was great difficulty for trainees to move beyond the programme into paid employment so MCE developed a range of small business initiatives with a focus on recycling.

One of these business initiatives was a proposal put to PCC what is this plse? for the development of a local resource recovery center. Following due process 'Trash Palace' was approved and the doors opened November 2002.

Trash Palace has been operating successfully for over 4 years and MCE believes this is owed in part, to a healthy working partnership between PCC and our organisation. We believe this has been a critical factor in helping us to reduce waste to landfill by up to 30% per annum and growing.

Currently, we employ 51 people, of these, 28 are trainees.

Implementing legislation on waste minimisation is an absolutely critical step toward waste reduction in Aotearoa. This bill is of importance to MCE because of the nature of our operations and we felt it pertinent to put forward a submission regarding the problems we encounter when dealing with waste.

MCE supports the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill and the establishment of a Waste Minimisation Authority in Aotearoa. MCE also supports Part 4 - Prohibition on disposal of materials, with the proviso that adequate systems are in place regionally to deal with these materials. This may need to be taken in consideration when allocation of the Levy is explored as capital injection for plant equipment or building is often extremely expensive.

Three parts of this Bill are of particular interest to us and we feel our experience in these areas could be of value in decision making processes and subsequent outcomes of this Bill. These are outlined as follows;

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MCE supports the waste Levy, in principle, however we have concerns about how these funds will be allocated and who would be eligible. As a community organisation we are forever looking for extra funding to develop our operations and do not have access to the capital that private enterprise does. There is a concern that private enterprise would have the ability to monopolise the waste market.

As previously mentioned large capital injection is required to get new projects up and running and this is one of the greatest hindrances to our progress.

A levy must be coupled with incentives to encourage and support waste reduction and to deter illegal dumping.

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This is long overdue. Voluntary accords are not working and a programme of this type is essential and needs to be mandatory.

Part of MCE operations is the sorting of recycled goods for a nationwide retail chain within the Wellington region. One of the problems we encounter is the generation of unnecessary packaging. 'Closing the loop' to make producers responsible for the waste they create would see a massive change in materials for which no recycling opportunities exist. According to recent internal audit figures (August 2006) we are having to land-fill annually;

• 1.8 tonne of mongrel plastics
• 7.8 tonne of un-graded hard plastics
• 300 kg of un-recyclable packing material

Although we pro-actively explore new opportunities for recycling, an extended producer responsibility programme will force producers to be accountable for the waste they create, therefore having a direct impact on the tonnage of material being land-filled unnecessarily.

Trading laws and a shift in producer priorities will need to be address to enable 'written off' items to be readily re-sold. Currently, some producers will not allow obsolete or slightly damaged goods to be given to Resource Recovery Centres for on-selling or repair as their view is that this directly competes with their own 'new' product in the marketplace.

Repairs are also not encouraged because either the accessibility to cheap products outweighs the opportunity for repair or, more income can be generated through repeated purchases.

MCE would like to see 'End of life' fees kept locally and allocated to those organisations who are already managing these items. Our concern is that this fee will be collected then the work will go out of the country where cheap labour is available resulting in materials ending up in regions that are not aligned with the intent of the Waste Minimisation Bill. Consequently we will have no control over the methods used to recycle or reuse these products.

MCE sees enormous economic and environmental opportunities that exist in developing products and markets within resource recovery in Aotearoa. All factors must be taken into consideration when making decisions of this kind as seen in quadruple bottom line accounting, so we gain clarity about true long-term costs.

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We want to make mention of creating effective behaviour change within households and organisations. In our experience behaviour change has been most effective when incentives are used as a tool for motivation supported by easy and accessible recycling systems. It is well known within the recycling industry that "if it is not easy, people will not do it".

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In our experience non-profit community organisations have rich stories to tell about how the work we do extends far beyond resource recovery and has greater and more significant benefits for local communities due primarily to our values and ethics.

With the proper allocation and use of funds MCE and other NGO's have the ability to develop comprehensive Resource Recovery Centers that are economically viable, environmentally sound and promote employment. Centres that understand environmental, social and cultural needs of their communities and recognise that these needs are not independent of one another, in fact, quite the opposite, they are entirely interconnected.

This Bill presents us with the opportunity to become an "eco-nation" leading the world as a model of sustainability in action. This opportunity must not to be missed.

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