No one knows what New Zealand's recycling rate is

The government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve a recycling rate it can’t even measure. (Image: NZME)

Cécile Meier

Fri, 18 Aug 2023

After months of investigating the rubbish industry for BusinessDesk's Waste is Money series, I still don't know what our recycling rate is.The Ministry for the Environment (Mfe) doesn’t know, the industry doesn’t know, and neither is even using the usual definition of recycling in their efforts to find out. This is troubling because the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidy money to improve a recycling rate it can’t even measure. Councils nationwide are paying private bus...

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