Time to fix our wasteful ways

New Zealanders seem to have a pathological need to know how we compare to the rest of the world – but in order to assuage our feelings of inadequacy, our favourite way to do that is on a per capita basis.

Olympic medals (per capita), charitable giving (per capita) sheep (per capita) radio stations (per capita). It doesn’t matter what you’re measuring, it’s the best chance our small country stands in any international pissing contest.

But that makes it hard to ignore our favourite metric when it makes us look bad.

The World Bank’s list of the countries with the most wasteful urban populations does just that – it ranks us the 10th most wasteful (per capita, of course). Few of the top 9 would be considered ‘‘developed’’ or even just ‘‘countries New Zealand likes to think it compares to’’. The United Kingdom, home of the prepeeled, plasticwrapped onion, ranked 43rd. They throw away (per capita) less than half what urbanites here do per day.

We bin five times the global daily average and it’s getting worse – it’s up 20 per cent in the past three years. What a waste! We have chucked our hopes of (per capita) glory out with the piles of packaging, plastic and crap we so readily pack off to the landfill to live for all eternity.

More favourable per capita comparisons would have us right up there on the list of the biggest consumers of takeaway coffee, because we Kiwis love a good flat white on the run. But given we also chuck about 300 million takeaway cups in the bin every year because we don’t have the facilities to recycle them, we’d probably also win the award for the most wasteful caffeine fiends (per capita).

One place I worked even used disposable coffee cups in the office, presumably to get around the fact that everyone in a workplace kitchen behaves like a teenager in their Mum’s kitchen and just leaves their dirty dishes on the bench.

That squares with how often we seem to be blithely chucking things in the bin when they could go elsewhere. The Ministry for the Environment found 25 per cent of household waste to the landfill was kitchen waste, ie, it could have been composted. (Not put down the kitchen gobbler – sadly, I’ve just discovered that sludge eventually ends up in the landfill, too) In fact, around three quarters of what we send to the landfill could have been recovered, re-used or recycled. Yup, 75 per cent.

I’ll be keeping that number in mind next time I forget to take my recyclable bags to the supermarket (because I’m sure there will be a next time). I’ll try to keep it front of mind next time I sneak something compostable into the rubbish bin purely because I don’t want to take the stinky compost down to the stinking compost bin.

And perhaps we could all consider where we Kiwis would like to sit on the lazy, dirty world-polluters list, because right now we don’t look too flash – per capita, of course.

I see courtrooms full of contrite people owning their failings and reading out apologies.

We bin five times the global daily average and it's getting worse – it's up 20 per cent in the past three years.