The spectre of New Zealand’s waste tyre issue seems to just keep growing. Despite a working party has put forward a plan that would see a tyre recycling scheme financed through a tax on imports (New Zealand has no domestic tyre manufacturing, so taxing imports is the easy way to control the fees), the government has shelved proposals already available and has begun planning a scheme from scratch.
Is New Zealand’s Waste Tyre Issue Due to Grow?
Of course, the initial proposal mirrored the tax concept that was trialled in South Africa through REDISA, but with a different set of local factors, proposers claim that it would have worked in New Zealand.
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has announced a new work programme to tackle waste, despite one being drawn up years ago.
At the moment the vehicle owner pays a $5 levy to the retailer, say a tyre shop. They hold on to that $5 and use it to pay the recycler when they turn up to take away all the tyre shop’s old tyres.
But there’s scope for fake recyclers to scam the system.
In 2011, the National government asked industry members to find a solution and they did.
Their answer was for a $5 levy to be paid by the importer to a trust when the tyre arrives in the country. That money would fund an organised pick-up and drop-off system for all used tyres, and businesses would then bid for the supply of those tyres to use them in innovative ways.
