'Everybody needs to do more' - Earth Day reveals resistance to change from plastic packaging

April 22, 2018

While some New Zealand businesses are jumping on board, there's still resistance to change.

Some New Zealand businesses have been taking part in Earth Day, an annual global campaign to try and protect the environment.

Organisers say the campaign, which began fifty years ago, now has more than one billion people from more than 190 countries participating.

This year, the theme is ending plastic pollution.

Kiwi burger chain Better Burger uses plant-based compostable packaging year-round.

Better Burger general manager Rod Ballenden says, "Everybody needs to do more. These multinational corporates that are talking about recyclable goals by 2025 - that's simply not good enough."

In New Zealand alone, around 252,000 tonnes of plastic waste is dumped in landfills each year.

Globally, scientists predict that unless something is done, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.

The UK has dubbed plastic pollution a worldwide emergency - and is looking to ban plastic products like plastic stirrers and straws.

The New Zealand government recently signed up to a UN-led campaign to protect the oceans from plastic.

Among its commitments is the banning of products with plastic microbeads, limiting plastic bag use, and reviewing the waste minimisation act.

Supermarkets Countdown and New World will phase out plastic bags at checkouts by the end of this year, but Pak'n'Save has yet to follow suit.

Sharon Humphreys, the executive director for the Packaging Council of New Zealand, says ending plastic pollution isn't likely.

"The role of packaging is to deliver goods effectively, efficiently and economically - and plastic, at this moment in time, delivers on all of those qualities," Ms Humphreys says.

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