Challenge description

There Is A Better Alternative To 'Take, Make and Dispose' - Climathon NZ

New Zealand has a waste problem and we need to make some big changes now for the future of our environment. As a country we are one of the highest producers of urban waste in the developed world, with each of us sending around 730kg to landfill per year. We need to stop using resources once and throwing them away, it’s not doing our environment any favours and it doesn’t make sense for our economy either.

We are currently in a linear economy where we take resources from nature to make things, use them for a short time, before disposing of them to landfill.

Our planet is suffocating with waste, and we are adding to greenhouse gas emissions through production processes, inefficient use of resources and landfills. Being Linear doesn’t just cost our environment but also our pockets, as extracting resources from the earth has a significant financial cost.

Challenge vision

There Is A Better Alternative To 'Take, Make and Dispose' - Climathon NZ

We all have a role in this and organisations need to take responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products and services, from the materials they source right through to how they are disposed of and everything between. Recently 14 local and multi-national companies signed up to the New Zealand Plastic Packaging Declaration, committing to use 100 per cent reusable, recyclable or composting packaging in their New Zealand operations by 2025 or earlier. This is a great start.

Individuals can have an impact too. A recent survey found that 50 percent of New Zealanders said they were either very or extremely worried about the impacts of waste. We can each create change now by using reusable items such as keep cups, drink bottles and shopping bags, making choices to compost at home, fixing products and buying products made to last. We can also choose to buy items made of recycled materials and say not to unnecessary single-use plastics such as straws. There are more ideas on how you can reduce your waste at mfe.govt.nz.

Individual changes will be backed by the Government’s recently announced waste work programme supporting New Zealand’s transition a circular economy. This includes expanding the Waste Disposal Levy to more landfills, improving our nationwide waste and resource recovery data, investing the Waste Minimisation Fund in systems, infrastructure and product innovation that will take us closer to a circular economy, introducing mandatory product stewardship schemes for problematic waste streams such as vehicle tyres, lithium-ion batteries, agrichemicals and refrigerants, and creating an overall strategy for New Zealand’s transition to a circular economy starting with road-maps for key sectors.

Innovation is key to our journey, so I am excited to see what the teams can come up with at this year’s Climathon and how their ideas can help New Zealand get one step closer to a circular economy.