No time to waste as recycling piles up

Sector change gains urgency after China’s recyclables ban, writes Jamie Morton

The flow-on impact of China’s recycling ban has been bigger than our industry expected, prompting the launch of a new taskforce. New Zealand previously shipped millions of kilograms of waste to Chinese processing plants each year, but its just-introduced ban on 24 types of foreign waste has forced recyclers to look for buyers elsewhere, mainly Southeast Asia.

Most of it was mixed paper and mixed plastics that weren’t recycled locally the way other recyclables like glass, aluminium and cardboard were.

Although exports to Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have surged, stockpiles of some plastic have begun to appear around the country as certain types of products became harder to sell.

“The ban has had a greater impact than the industry expected and we need a co-ordinated response from central and local government . . . with the waste and business sectors,” Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage said yesterday.

A special taskforce was being set up within the Ministry for the Environment to lead the response.

A separate working group with representatives from councils and the sector would provide independent advice.

Sage said the recycling sector was facing pressure from the significant drop in global commodity prices.

The latest Customs figures showed the 2.7m kg of plastic waste sent to China in the first quarter of last year had dropped to just 125,904kg over the same time this year, and the associated value fell