In early September, The Packaging Forum hosted its inaugural Summit - Navigating the Challenging Landscape, for more than 130 members and industry partners.
The format comprised interviews with several international experts on various aspects of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to provide an update on the challenges they faced in their home regions and how we can learn from their experiences to establish best-practice sustainable solutions to waste in New Zealand.
What was notable, however, was that all the international experts were consistent in their opinions and experiences that for New Zealand to succeed in reducing waste and improving recycling outcomes, mandatory stewardship was key and that any programme we undertake needs to take an all-of-packaging approach to achieve equity among materials and producers.
In New Zealand, currently only plastic packaging is mandated and requires an EPR scheme.
Rob Langford, CEO of The Packaging Forum, said the Forum will be working with many stakeholders to move beyond a mandatory plastics scheme to an all-of-packaging EPR scheme, with initial work to assess the impact on New Zealand being tested.
Under EPR, the full end-of-life cost of packaging has been imposed on the obligated parties (the people putting the packaging in the market) with the intent of driving change to better packaging choices, which includes transitioning to more easily recyclable materials, using less, or developing different pathways to market.
“Seamus Clancy, recently retired CEO of REPAK Ireland, was very clear in his commentary speaking from his 30-year experience in Ireland that for New Zealand, rather than just running with an EPR system for one material, we look to start again and establish an equitable system that covers all materials [not just plastic] – this is chiefly to avoid placing the burden on the producers of that one material and avoid producers transitioning to packaging that will have worse environmental impacts and that the legislative framework which supports the programme must be robust to ensure fairness across the board, and which is enforced,” said Langford.
“There are many organisations which are standing up and taking responsibility for the material they place on the market, and others are happy to sit back and, as Seamus put it, ‘be free riders. An all-of-packaging approach just makes sense from an economy of scale perspective as well - we’re a small country so, like Ireland, where Seamus is based, have one straight forward compliance system.”
Maintaining long-term relationships and ongoing engagement with Government and legislative decision-makers is also key to overcoming the challenges of EPRs and paramount to ensuring sustainable, workable regulations that are future-focused rather than a hindrance to progression.
Seamus stated that governments are great at putting regulation and laws in place, and disappearing.
“The biggest matter, I think, is making sure that the legislation isn’t a total ass. You must engage with the legislators, sit down, work with them, look at what’s practical, what’s not practical, and making sure all the elements of the legislation is correct,” said Seamus.
Michelle Saunders, Vice President, Sustainability at Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada agreed with Seamus and stated that with EPRs, organisations need to ensure regulations are future-facing and that we’re not shutting the door to innovation, new technologies, new materials or new consumer behaviours. Ultimately, we don’t know what will be in the marketplace in the next 20 years.
“We have an engaged industry here with producers wanting to do the right thing, but we do find we are often faced with ongoing challenges such as the recent standardisation of kerbside collections which, in effect, made previously recyclable materials (such as caps and lids) unable to be recycled,” said Langford.
“It was interesting to hear Michelle’s thoughts on our caps and lids situation – she found it confounding from her Canadian perspective regarding the impact on consumer confusion or stalling innovation – if you’re telling everyone that the lids and caps can’t be recycled then there’s no incentive for producers to use recyclable materials – and this is something at the Forum we absolutely agree on. We need to incentivise the use of the highest performing materials so we can maximise the value of the material; and this is one reason why the Forum set up the Caps and Lids Recycling Scheme, so we can recover those materials, and put them back into the recycling and circular economy.”
“The conversations among our members and industry partners were very much aligned with – the time for talk is over, let’s just get out there and make things happen.”
With clear support, it’s time we came together across all stakeholders and start to make real progress, and embrace what we all have in common for the betterment of New Zealand.
For more information on The Packaging Forum visit www.packagingforum.org.nz
