This week, the waste industry affiliated organisations and businesses have met in Auckland for the Waste Minz Conference. The SIFT General Manager, Olivia Day is currently in attendance.
The latest announcement from the conference is that Environment Minister, Nick Smith has launched the New Zealand Waste Strategy.
Key themes within the strategy was the collaborative approach dealing with waste efficiently within industry, whilst focusing on the reduction of the harmful effects of waste and efficiency of resource usage.
The minister also announced that there has been funding provided to the Auckland based, Tyre Gone Processors Limited – to the tune of $300,000 to expand the plant. The tyre processing operation was applauded as having “developed the country’s first 100% green self-sustaining recycling plant to turn our millions of used tyres into light fuel oil, gas, carbon and steel using a process called pyrolysis”.*
Nick Smith also made mention of the number of product stewardship schemes that are arising within different industries. This further demonstrates the Minister’s current focus for companies to be working cooperatively with Ministry towards achieving waste minimisation goals, that corporate responsibility needs to have equal focus to improving the businesses bottom line.
This is great news for SIFT project’s such as the Agpac, Plasback Product Stewardship Scheme that focused on the promotion of educational tools to get South Island based farmers interested in recycling agricultural plastic wrapping, rather than relying on harmful traditional means of disposal such as burning the plastic.
The Waste Strategy is available at: http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/waste/waste-strategy/index.html
Tags: Waste Management, Waste Strategy
