The Climate Change Commission's Draft Advice - how to have your say and how it’s relevant to throwaway serviceware
On 31 January 2021, He Pou a Rangi - the Climate Change Commission released its draft advice to the Government on the first three emissions budgets for New Zealand, and the policies the Government needs to use to reduce emissions.
This advice is now open for public consultation until 28 March 2021. After this date, the Climate Change Commission will make changes based on the feedback received, then release its final advice in May. The Government then has until the end of the year to respond to the recommendations.
This blog posts covers two things:
How and why to have your say on the Climate Change Commission’s draft advice (plus resources to help you!)
How the Commission’s draft advice is relevant to waste and throwaway serviceware.
How and Why to Have Your Say
Is this report important?
Yes. Climate change presents a very real existential threat to all life on Earth. If the world fails to act urgently to reduce emissions, we risk temperature rises as high as 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the Century, which would make large swathes of the planet uninhabitable and cause untold levels of human suffering.
The Climate Change Commission’s report is basically the proposed plan for how our Government can cut emissions and ensure New Zealand plays our part in avoiding dangerous levels of warming.
So, we encourage you to make time to engage with the content of the report, and then make a submission.
Engaging with the Report, simplified!
The report is 188 pages long (ah!). If you don’t have time to wade through all that (understandable), we highly recommend you check out the excellent summary of the report produced by School Strike 4 Climate NZ. It’s in Two Parts and is very accessible. You can find these by clicking on the images below.
Making a submission
Public consultation is open until 28 March 2021. To make a submission, you can visit the Climate Change Commission’s submission portal. The submission form is flexible and allows you to:
Simply upload your own submission OR
Use the online form, which is in 3 parts.
Part 1 is sharing the one BIG thing you think is important.
Part 2 is answering six broad questions about the overall direction and approach of the report.
Part 3 is a set of 24 detailed questions.
Good news: If you would like more guidance with making a submission, a group of organisations have come together to create a super helpful submission guide. Click the pink button to access the guide:
More good news: Greenpeace Aotearoa has also created a helpful submission template form, which is quick and easy to complete. If you’d like to use this instead, click the pink button:
And remember, if you feel a bit overwhelmed by all the questions, you do not need to fill out all parts of the Climate Change Commission’s submission form. You can just pick what works best for you! You don’t need to be an expert on climate change policy. You can speak from your heart.
How is this Relevant to Waste and Throwaway Serviceware?
“Aotearoa needs to fundamentally change the way it deals with and thinks about waste. A transformation to this sector will not only reduce emissions but move us from a throwaway culture to one that values our resources.” - Climate Change Commission (2021) Draft Advice, p.13
“In our vision of the future, Aotearoa has a circular economy and generates very little waste.” - Climate Change Commission (2021) Draft Advice, p.9.
Many people don’t automatically draw the link between waste and climate change, but in fact the two things are intimately connected. In the words of Zero Waste Network Aotearoa: “By tackling waste you can reduce emissions, it ticks both boxes at the same time.”
For this reason, waste is one of the five main sectors considered in the Climate Change Commission’s draft advice.
Rubbish in Landfill is bad for the climate
The Commission calculates that waste makes up 10% of New Zealand’s biogenic methane emissions (the rest comes from agriculture). Methane emissions from waste mostly come from organic material breaking down in landfill. So, that’s stuff like food scraps and greenwaste, but also wood, paper, cardboard and other fibre products.
The Commission says we need to reduce this type of waste to landfill by at least 23% by 2030 (p.68). To achieve this, they note that “preventing waste at source is the most effective way to reduce emissions” (p.124) and that “reusing and recovering waste materials is a key part of a circular economy” (p.68). They also recommend that the waste that can’t be reduced needs to be recycled or composted instead.
“Reusing and recovering waste materials is a key part of a circular economy. Our path would see a reduction in the amount of waste generated and a focus on reducing the amount of organic waste, such as food, wood and paper, that go into landfills. Our path would see the total amount of organic waste going to landfills decrease by at least 23% from 2018 to 2030.” (p.68)
So what does this mean for serviceware?
When people think about the problems of disposable serviceware, they often focus on the fact that these items are single-use plastic. However, the Commission’s recommendations show us that the problem goes beyond this.
Most throwaway serviceware includes a lot of paper, cardboard and other natural materials in addition to the plastic bits. For example, disposable coffee cups are mostly paper with an inner plastic lining, alternatives to plastic cutlery are often made of bamboo, and takeaway containers often have paper and cardboard elements or are made out of things like sugarcane and potato starch. When these things end up in landfill, they heat up our climate by producing methane.
So, even though the Commission does not specifically mention disposable serviceware in their report, their recommendations are absolutely relevant because of what disposable serviceware is so often made of.
How to ‘Divert’ throwaway serviceware from landfill
The Commission says that we need to divert organic material from landfill by at least 23% by 2030. What does ‘divert’ mean?
First and foremost, diverting serviceware from landfill means preventing it in the first place. In the Commission’s own words, “preventing waste at source is the most effective way to reduce emissions” (p.124).
We need to reduce our use of single-use serviceware for the sake of the climate. We can do this by switching to reusable alternatives, through customers remembering to BYO, and through the Government supporting hospitality, events and other outlets to adopt reuse systems at scale.
Diverting organic waste from landfill can also mean recycling and composting the organic waste that we cannot reduce. While this is an appropriate approach for things like food scraps or office paper, this is not an appropriate approach for serviceware because:
1. Recycling and composting serviceware won’t do anything about the fact that making a product to be used just once is a waste of energy and resources (i.e. bad for the climate) - the extraction of resources (e.g. forestry) and the production processes for these items have all sorts of negative environmental effects, including greenhouse gas emissions.
2. Recycling is notoriously difficult for serviceware because most serviceware is either:
food contaminated;
a composite product of different materials stuck together (like plastic and cardboard);
used on the go when people don’t have access to recycling bins; or
all of the above.
3. Compostable serviceware relies on using the soil as a waste disposal system for synthetic products. Many compostable serviceware products actually have dodgy additives in them like PFAS (even the plastic-free ones) that are ‘forever chemicals’ (i.e. they NEVER biodegrade) and are bad for you and bad for soil. Meanwhile, compostable plastic products, like compostable coffee cups, often can only be broken down in commercial facilities and we don’t have proper collection systems to get these products to those facilities. Furthermore, many commercial facilities do not accept compostable plastics because they are difficult to break down and add nothing of value to the soil (and also reduce the value of the compost because their presence in the compost prevents the composter from getting organic certification for the final compost).
The cOMMISSION’s advice does not address THE CLIMATE HARM OF SINGLE-USE PRODUCTS
The Commission’s advice clearly shows that we need to reduce our use of throwaway serviceware given so much of it is made of materials that are bad for our climate when they go to landfill. The Commission’s recommendations also prioritise efforts to reduce waste at source, before relying on recycling or composting.
However, unfortunately, the Commission’s advice focuses on methane emissions from organic waste in landfill. Its calculation of emissions from waste does not cover the upstream carbon emissions or ‘embodied energy’ of all the products we make, use, and dispose. This is a massive missed opportunity because we know that throwaway products have a climate impact well before they’re thrown away, and that making things like plates, cups, spoons, soy fish etc., to be used just once before being chucked wastes energy and resources. Addressing these emissions is an important part of building the case for a reuse economy, which keeps resources in circulation.
The Commission DOES recognise this shortfall in its advice and says:
“…we know that moving from a linear economy (on a ‘take-make-use-throw’ setting) to a more circular economy (where resources are repeatedly used), would result in less emissions from waste disposal, and from extraction, production, consumption and transport processes.” (p.3 of Waste Evidence Chapter 4(d)).
However, the Commission explains that data and research is still lacking to measure these types of emissions properly (argh!)
Recognising this is a gap in their advice, the Commission says “We are keen to understand the potential opportunities offered by increasing resource efficiency and moving to a circular economy in Aotearoa.” Accordingly, the Commission recommends that the Government start measuring and increasing the circularity of the economy by 2025. Hopefully this will generate the type of information that would enable the Commission to think bigger in future advice.
It’s disappointing that the Commission feels unable to translate its ambitious, high-level vision (i.e. moving away from a throwaway culture to a circular economy) into its actual forecasts and recommendations. This could mean even more delays and heel dragging before Government takes action to support the reuse economy.
However, for ordinary people like us there’s an important takeaway: the Commission has made clear that there are upstream emissions from disposable products. Just because we can’t yet quantify exactly what those upstream emissions are, doesn’t mean those emissions don’t exist, or that ignoring them will make them go away. Moving Aotearoa away from single-use is good for the climate, even if we can’t put an exact number on it. For those of us on the ground and at the grassroots, that’s enough information to keep us on the task to #takeawaythrowaways and embrace an accessible and affordable reusable future for everyone. And we’ll still be here and ready to collaborate once the Climate Change Commission and the Government have worked their numbers out.
Want to know more?
If you’re keen to explore further how throwaways waste energy and resources in a way that is bad for the climate (as well as causing numerous other harms), and the role that reusables can play to help solve these issues, check out the awesome new website, Solving Packaging.