HEAT Environment

Christine Rose christine.rose25@gmail.com

Feeding the beast

Rubbish production is big business. Coca Cola is the world’s worst plastic polluter, and global corporations like it are all responsible for a scourge of single use plastic and other rubbish that pollutes our land and seas.

When I was a kid, plastic was a valued commodity, and milk and soft drinks came in glass bottles that you could take back to the shop for cash and make some pocket money while cleaning up the environment. After the initial container return scheme was cancelled years ago, and the plastic pandemic hit, campaigners have worked to get a new scheme implemented here. But inexplicably, the Government recently delayed (abandoned?) the proposed and ready-to-go scheme. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins cited ‘cost of living’, even though kids and ‘rubbish pickers’ could actually supplement their incomes through collecting and returning bottles, while also doing good for the planet.

But rubbish disposal is big business in NZ, led by Waste Management, now owned by a global investment company Igneo Infrastructure Partners. We all know the company wants to set up a new landfill in the Dome Valley, to the consternation of many. Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson said that because his council strongly opposed the Dome Valley landfill, they should come up with a viable alternative. So now there’s a new waste-as-money earner proposal on the table. Jepson just happens to be a former employee of Olivine, a company which makes waste to energy (WTE) factories. So, Kaipara and other local councils are investigating the viability

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of a WTE scheme near the railway line, in a ‘gully or valley somewhere’. Jepson said, “You only have to go on Google to see that there are remote locations in Rodney and Kaipara where everything can be contained.” Look out if these industrial furnaces are proposed near you.

The viable – and best – alternative, is to turn off the tap on plastic pollution. WTE plants support a pollute-waste-burn linear process which undermines both renewable energy and waste minimisation goals. They are an inefficient way to create energy, especially compared with renewable alternatives like household solar. WTE plants require a specified, guaranteed and continual volume of waste over decades, driving waste production – the ‘feed the beast’ effect. The burning of rubbish can pollute the air and land with cancercausing toxins called furans, concentrates persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury into toxic waste, which also still need to go to landfill. WTE plants cause traffic impacts both with construction and operation, even when located near rail lines.

The alternative to the Dome Valley landfill is not a WTE plant. It is government regulation to control the production of plastic and other waste to start with. Government and councils need to make it harder for waste production businesses and easier for the public to reuse, reduce, re-purpose and recycle. With the rejection of the container return scheme and the support for WTE investigations, the powers that be are feeding the beast when it should be starved.