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Overview
Over the next 100 years, the Auckland region will face enormous change brought about by global economic, environmental, and political forces. Local trends, including high population growth, add to the challenges and opportunities for the region. Auckland has to compete in a global market place to sell its goods and services and to attract the talented people it requires to secure a sustainable and prosperous future.
To face these challenges, Auckland requires local and regional governance equal to the best in the world and capable of working effectively with central government to ensure Auckland is a successful, sustainable city in the Asia Pacific region and is recognised as such.
To that end,
the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance was established by the Government in October 2007 to investigate, and make recommendations on, local and regional government arrangements for the Auckland region in the future.
Packaging Council Position
- We support the ‘One Auckland’ proposal to provide for a fully integrated regional waste structure which would control all major infrastructure assets and development whilst maintaining a strong community component.
- We advocate a regional approach to waste management decisions which should be consistent, but not limited in scope, by national decisions.
- We believe that a clearly identified strategic regional vision to waste minimisation and resource recovery has a greater chance of achieving effective waste management solutions than the current fragmented local approach.
- The economics of waste management services, particularly with regards to the recovery of recyclables, is best handled on a regional scale. Without volume recovery operations can be uneconomically viable which potentially compromises the range of materials which can be recovered – this is a situation which is occurring across the Auckland region today.
- We are strongly supportive of the decision taken by Auckland and Manukau City Councils in their joint venture with Visy Recycling to provide for a state-of-the-art materials recovery facility (MRF) to recover recyclables collected through kerbside collection. The scale and cost of this facility, an investment of circa $24 million, is testament to how effective waste minimisation and resource recovery policies can be implemented when a strategic regional focus is applied rather than a local solution.
- A regional consolidation of waste management funding ensures that the funding is maximised to full effect.
- We believe that consolidation of funding with rigorously applied cost/benefit analysis has the opportunity to produce exceptional results in establishing and effectively dealing with known problematic waste, such as organic waste, which may prove too costly to be dealt with at a local level prolonging the continuing practice of this material going to landfill and all the inherent problems it creates.
- It is the Packaging Council’s position that a fully integrated regional approach to waste minimisation and resource recovery would strongly enhance Auckland’s position as a World Class city.
Click here to download the Packaging Council's submission to the Royal Commission on solid waste management in the Auckland region.
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