It’s a question Waste Management Institute New Zealand chief executive Paul Evans is often asked when discussing waste management in New Zealand.
Paul Evans, chief cxecutive of the Waste Management Institute New Zealand (WasteMINZ)
Overseas Energy from Waste (EfW) is often touted as a progressive solution to a myriad of waste problems.
Not just in Europe, where it has been a deeply embedded and common practice for many years, but also throughout Asia, America and even closer to home in Australia.
Like most subjects there isn’t one simple reason why Aotearoa isn’t jumping aboard the EfW bandwagon, but rather a combination of four key factors that mean it is hard to make EfW stack up locally.
Community perception
Many in the community take EfW as simply meaning burning or incinerating waste. This perception comes from practices which were actually relatively common in the not too-distant past, where waste was burnt at low temperatures simply to reduce its volume. There was no attempt at all to recover energy from this process; it was simply about disposing of the waste as cheaply as possible.
The problem with many of these low temperature and inefficient processes was that gases were often produced and discharged, and these discharges had the very real potential to cause harm to both the environment and human health.
Realistically, with today’s modern and efficient technologies these health and environmental concerns can be largely avoided through treatment and mitigation of emissions. So whilst there would certainly need to be significant engagement and consultation with affected communities, I believe these perceptual issues can be largely overcome.
Cannibalising recycling programmes
This is another perceptual issue which stems from poor performance of EfW plants elsewhere in the world.
In the 1990s it became relatively common in parts of Europe to build large EfW plants. These plants were expensive to build and so needed to run at maximum capacity in order to deliver an appropriate return for investors.
Consequently plant owners needed more and more feed stock, which in many cases meant readily recyclable materials were sent to plants. This was a highly undesirable outcome, as it undermined established recycling programmes, which, from a waste hierarchy perspective are a much better outcome.
New Zealand has a very well-embedded recycling culture, as well as excellent programmes and infrastructure in place, so there would be significant resistance to any such change.
Consistency of feedstock
EfW plants of any great scale typically require significant capital investment and therefore need a consistent supply of feedstock to keep them running in a financially sustainable manner.
When compared to many countries which favour EfW as a solution, New Zealand is geographically large and relatively underpopulated. In reality this means that outside of a major population centre such as Auckland it would be incredibly difficult to get the consistent volumes of waste required to keep a plant running.
In an area such as Auckland, there’s certainly no shortage of waste. Auckland Council’s Waste Assessment (2011) states that in 2009 some 1.4 million tonnes of waste went to landfill, around half of which was paper, plastic, timber and the like. All this material ‘could’ be potential fuel for an EfW plant, but there are many and varied disposal options already in existence competing for this same waste, many of which are likely to be a far cheaper solution.
Existing alternatives
When it comes to the crunch, I firmly believe that simple economics are the key reason for New Zealand’s current avoidance of EfW.
Landfilling remains New Zealand’s predominant mechanism for waste disposal and it is a relatively cost-effective means of doing so. In the absence of significant waste disposal levies through regulatory intervention, it simply becomes impossible to make an EfW plant stack up whereas in many other jurisdictions large waste disposal levies are common for a range of reasons. Why would a waste disposer send their waste to an EfW plant at say $200 or $300/tonne when they could responsibly dispose of it in a well-managed landfill for half that price?
The future
I firmly believe that for some material streams such as end-of-life tyres EfW theoretically presents an excellent solution to the problem of waste. However without regulatory intervention to guarantee a consistent supply of feedstock or economic incentives to make it a financially viable choice for waste disposers, business will simply not have the confidence to invest in EfW as a solution for New Zealand.
Paul Evans is chief executive of the Waste Management Institute New Zealand (WasteMINZ), the largest representative body of the waste and resource recovery sector that was formed in 1989 and is a membership-based organisation with over 1,000 members ranging from small operators to councils and large companies
