PACKAGING COUNCIL (SECRETARIAT)

PACKAGING ACCORD
YEAR TWO PROGRESS REPORT

Tony Nowell
Chair
Accord Governing Board

I am delighted to celebrate our progress through the second year of the Packaging Accord 2004.

I am pleased to report that New Zealanders are recycling more of their packaging materials than ever before and more packaging is now recovered per capita than goes to landfill. That's the good news - but it is tempered by the fact that we are also producing and consuming more.

This makes our work toward a common goal of using less packaging and developing sustainable markets for new and recycled materials as relevant now as it was when we signed the Accord in 2004.

Whilst the first year was about getting industry and sector groups on board, work is now underway which has allowed us to identify what needs to be done in the remaining three years of this five year commitment. Frankly before we started the benchmarking process, this was not the case and in the words of the poet Seneca "If you don't know what port you are sailing to, no wind is favourable."

At the end of Year Two, we have charted our progress and mapped out the route.

This report is a testimony to what has been achieved and I would like to share with you some of our successes:

• Paper recovery achieved an outstanding 72% recovery rate for the second year and we have one of the highest recovery rates for paper in the world.


• The glass sector introduced New Zealand's first large scale voluntary levy system to fund research and development of alternative uses for glass. One of the early projects has been support for an amended Transit road specification which enables up to 5% glass cullet to be used in the base course for roads. This has led to trials in Palmerston North and Nelson to assess the commercial viability of crushing glass, either separately, or as a part of a mix with other aggregate. We are now conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the two different processes that will provide valuable information for other councils.


• Plastics recovery is up 12% outpacing the 6% increase in consumption with significant progress made with the recovery of expanded polystyrene and farm plastics. Just recently, based on a similar model to glass, a voluntary levy has been set up by Ag-recovery to fund the collection and processing of farm plastics.


• There was a 6% increase in the number of households with access to recycling programmes through new kerbside recovery programmes. 95% of New Zealanders have access to recycling facilities and 77% of councils now offer households a kerbside collection. To help improve consistency, best practice guidelines have been developed by Local Government New Zealand and Central Government for waste management contracts.


• And as the representative for Brand Owners and Retailers I am particularly proud of the launch of a world leading application of EANnet software which will ultimately provide point of sale packaging data. We are the first country to use this supply chain software in this way and it's going to revolutionize the information we have about packaging consumption and is a major undertaking by those involved.

But it's not all been plain sailing.

No sector will achieve its targets without co-operation from its partners and this does present challenges because there are, and always will be, different positions taken by brand owners and retailers, recycling operators, local and central government and packaging manufacturers. It would be naïve to think otherwise. However the Accord's strength is bringing together parties that previously often worked in isolation.

It's true to say that from our respective sectors we've had to look long and hard at what we are doing to see how we can deliver our collective commitment to reduce waste whilst society continues to consumer more. Facing up to our role in issues such as these is not easy and sometimes it's been an uncomfortable process particularly with other Accord parties there to coax you along but we have learnt a lot in a short time.

Overall in Year Two collection rates as a percentage of consumption have slipped slightly to 52%. Whilst paper has exceeded its target already and plastics are well on the way to meeting theirs; glass, steel and aluminium are finding it more difficult. There are a number of reasons for this.

It's important to remember that we are striving towards Accord targets which are influenced by changes to the local and global marketplace. Commodity prices for recovered packaging fluctuate, new policies such as the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill are mooted and strategy changes.

Consumption of aluminium is down due to changes in consumer preference and there has been a corresponding increase in glass and plastic consumption. But as in our own organisations, we have to work within the prevailing market conditions and anticipate future developments. It's a challenge which will continue as we complete the remaining three years of the Accord.

We have found that our data collection process for steel appears to be unreliable. Despite a major public awareness campaign, the steel recovery rates continue to decline and this simply doesn't reflect reality based on the experience of several Accord partners so we are looking to the point of sale data to give us better information going forward.

The ongoing problems around glass remind us that sustainability means balancing environmental, economic and social imperatives and that this is rarely easy. Society wants glass collected however we need to have sustainable uses and an economic market for the recovered glass. The Glass Forum is working hard to develop alternative uses for glass to keep pace with growing recovery rates but new markets take time to develop. This is an ongoing concern for recycling operators working within existing contracts and challenged by a glass quota system.

And we have to get better at talking to each other. The introduction by some councils of collections which mix glass, steel, aluminium and plastics in one container means that glass recovered in this way has a more limited and less valuable use because of colour or physical contamination. In short it's less likely to be used in glass making. This has had an effect on glass recovery levels. As more councils move to co-mingled collections to reduce costs and for health and safety reasons, Accord partners will need to work together to find a solution to a problem which is unlikely to go away.

Reciprocally decisions which brand owners make about packaging design can impact on recycling operations. This year we have seen the steady increase of starch based plastics by brand owners who are encouraged globally by their customers to innovate packaging which will degrade over time. However without clear labeling or an infrastructure in place to deal with them, the householder doesn't know whether to put them in the recycling bin or out for waste. Under the Accord Plastics NZ and the recycling operators are working together to find solutions. However challenges also present opportunities and industry is looking at how to use degradable plastics in energy recovery.

One of the common themes coming through is that Accord parties are talking to each other, learning from each other and listening to each other. We can and will get better at this but from where we set sail, we have come a long way in a short amount of time.

At the end of Year Two, we all know what we have to do to reach our destination and it'll be an interesting and rewarding journey for all of us.

There are some key constituents without whom none of this would have happened. I would like to thank the secretariat of the Packaging Accord under the executive direction of Paul Curtis for managing the day to day Accord work programme supported by Rachel Depree and her team at the Ministry for the Environment.

I would also like to thank the Governing Board for its support and commitment.

Together you have made my role as Chair of the Governing Board a much easier one.

PACKAGING COUNCIL OF NEW ZEALAND
ACTING AS THE NZ PACKAGING ACCORD SECRETARIAT
77 Greenmount Drive, East Tamaki, Manukau
PO Box 58899, Greenmount, Auckland
PHONE: 09 271 4044, FAX: 09 271 4041