Reducing waste

Nandor Tanczos' Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill has passed its first reading and been sent to select committee. It's a fairly chunky and technical bill which would establish extended producer responsibility for manufacturers, impose a waste levy to send an economic signal to encourage waste minimisation, and set up a Waste Minimisation Authority to encourage recycling. The general aim is to internalise the cost of waste, rather than allowing manufacturers and consumers to dump it on society as a whole.

Predictably, National and United Future voted against. And the debate apparently saw their "environment" spokesperson, Nick Smith, standing up for the "right" of companies to externalise their costs and dump them on others. And they claim to believe in the free market...

Meanwhile, it looks like Parliament also got through Kate Wilkinson's Resource Management (Security for Costs) Amendment Bill and Steve Chadwick's Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading) Amendment Bill , so there will be three bills drawn from the ballot tomorrow. And hopefully we'll be seeing some new ones as well...