A $36.7 million Government investment in "high-tech optical sorters" will help to end manual rubbish sorting, described as "not pleasant work" by Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage.
The Green Party MP announced the funding on Wednesday as part of a plan to reduce the amount of rubbish ending up in New Zealand's landfills by upgrading seven high-tech recycling plants from Northland to Canterbury.
Sage has also welcomed recommendations in a report by the Ministry for the Environment to standardise kerbside recycling collections to help reduce waste across New Zealand, which currently has one of the highest rates of waste per capita in the developed world.
It recommended incentivising local authorities to collect glass separately to other recyclable materials, incentivise the collection of food waste for composting, and overall standardise the collection of different materials from metal to paper.
Sage said there is much to do to improve recycling in New Zealand and said COVID-19 lockdowns have created further challenges. The Government is also responding to China's decision to stop taking in most types of plastics at the beginning of 2018.
"This $36.7 million investment and implementing the kerbside report recommendations will help improve recycling infrastructure and materials recovery," Sage said.
"Currently New Zealand's recycling system relies on a lot of manual sorting of materials so that they can be reprocessed. It's not pleasant work, especially when people put rubbish in their recycling bin.
"Investing in high-tech optical sorters will make for safer workplaces and speed up the sorting process to separate different materials, such as paper and plastics."
Sage explained how some plastic materials are difficult to tell apart, even for professionals.
"This is where the optical sorter can determine in a split-second whether, for example, a clear rigid plastic is made from 1, 3, 6 or 7 resin," she said. "The latter three plastics are low value and treated as contamination in many kerbside collections nowadays."
Where will the money go?
The $36 million is part of the $124 million the Government announced in July it planned to invest from the $50 billion COVID-19 recovery fund in a number of waste infrastructure initiatives across the country.
The $36 million will be split into upgrading material recovery facilities in Christchurch, Auckland, New Plymouth, Hamilton, Thames, Napier, Northland, Bay of Plenty and Canterbury.
The investment sits alongside other Government initiatives to reduce waste going to landfills such plans to increase the waste levy over four years from July 1, 2021, from $10 per tonne to $60 per tonne.
The Government is designing a return scheme for beverage containers, and there are plans to phase out plastic straws, cotton buds, drink stirrers, tableware, some single-use cups and lids, single-use produce bags by January 2025.
Not everyone is on board with the Government's approach to waste minimisation.
ACT's environment spokesperson Simon Court thinks waste incinerators should be utilised to burn rubbish and says getting a permit for waste to energy under the Resource Management Act is now almost impossible.
The Government banned plastic shopping bags in July 2019 to help the environment, but despite reports of 202 businesses breaching the ban by over 450 members of the public, there have been no prosecutions.
In some cases, businesses have used very thick plastic bags, over 70 microns, which are compliant with the regulations - often described as a loophole in the system.
Sage said the investment in waste infrastructure will help ensure New Zealand emerges from COVID-19 with a far better recycling and resource recovery system.
"It will help New Zealand deal with waste and recycling onshore, recover more materials, and reduce the amount of rubbish ending up in the tip. I'm pleased we're making progress to make recycling easier and more effective."
