Reading the statistics

Environmentalists might have reason to smile. In November 2007, the Packaging Council announced that 57 percent of New Zealand's packaging was recycled between July 2006 and June 2007. That's a 20 percent increase on the previous year.

And the government's most recent state-of-the-environment report shows improvements too. The Ministry for the Environment estimates that 2.4 million tonnes of waste is diverted from landfills every year. The overall amount of solid waste sent to landfills has dropped slightly from an estimated 3.180 million tonnes in 1995 to 3.156 million tonnes in 2006 - despite an increase in our population.

Don't get too comfortable

So is the tide turning in the war against waste? We're not too sure. Our statistics on recycling and waste trends are a mishmash of estimates and actual figures. That's because a combination of public and private organisations deal with our waste.

We asked Christchurch City Council (a council that's reputed to keep good records on public waste) whether or not our rate of recycling was outstripping the amount of waste being sent to the landfill.

The statistics indicate recycling is on the increase in Christchurch and waste is falling slightly (see the graph below). But it's hard to find two figures that show a direct comparison between the amount of waste sent to the landfill and the amount recycled.

Council figures show that for every person in Christchurch City in 2006/07, an average of 321kg of household waste was sent to landfills. In contrast an average of 76kg of recyclable materials was collected by council kerbside recycling services. These are one council's figures for household rubbish only, but they suggest there's still a big gap between the amount of waste sent to landfills and the amount being recycled.