The Government is consulting on proposals for a suite of amendments to the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 (WMA) and the Litter Act 1979. These proposals are on the heels of last year’s waste minimisation changes, demonstrating the government’s keen interest in minimising waste and enabling those involved in the waste minimisation framework to work more effectively toward that goal before the next general election.

Extended Producer Responsibility 

One key proposed reform is replacing the existing product stewardship provisions with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) provisions. EPR provisions will shift the responsibility for material recovery and waste management to producers, importers and retailers instead of, for example, councils or communities. They will also emphasise that producers must take responsibility for managing and minimising the environmental impacts of their products throughout their lifecycle.

The proposed EPR framework would, for example, enable authorities to identify priority products (and exclusions), assign responsibilities to key parties, and clearly define roles for stakeholders tasked with managing the scheme, including the Minister for the Environment, the Secretary for the Environment, regulators, and Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs). 

The framework also empowers PROs and regulators to establish financial controls, such as scheme charges or refundable deposits. It sets out how EPR schemes would operate in practice, including provisions for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the scheme. 
PROs would effectively take charge of the EPR schemes with their responsibilities already in line with those set out in the product stewardship guideline and in existing product stewardships schemes. PROs would be more directly responsible for scheme performance, and there would be greater opportunities for the Minister to intervene if the schemes are not being managed appropriately and effectively. 

This would be a welcome change as, at the date of this article, only one of the six ‘priority products’ identified back in 2020, only tyres have a product stewardship scheme completely in place. Unfortunately, the development of other schemes will likely be delayed ensuring alignment with the new EPR framework once it is introduced.

Improving the waste Levy system

One of the key changes to the waste levy system is how funds are distributed to territorial authorities. Instead of the current population-only approach, which doesn’t support smaller councils faced with fixed waste management costs, the proposed model would allocate 20% of total levy funding equally between all territorial authorities as a flat-rate base, with the remaining 80% based on population. The new model will hopefully result in a fairer distribution amongst the territorial authorities while still providing for the scale and scope of waste-related matters that larger population authorities face.

A modern and effective compliance regime

Currently, prosecution is the primary avenue for addressing non-compliance with the WMA, with maximum fines of NZ$100,000 for all main offences at a central government level or NZ$20,000 for a breach of the bylaws. The issue with this is that prosecution can be a disproportionate response to low-level non-compliance, which often goes unpunished. 

Therefore, the government is proposing to introduce a four-tiered response model that recognises the varying levels of offending and promotes consistency across the framework. The framework aims to accomplish this by establishing a graduated system of enforcement actions that link offences with their associated outcomes. These outcomes will range from warnings and infringement notices to prosecution, depending on the nature and severity of the offending.

Next steps

The Ministry is currently seeking feedback on the proposed amendments and submissions are open until 1 June 2025. The full consultation document can be accessed here.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about these changes or would like help in preparing feedback on the proposal, please reach out to one of our experts who will be happy to assist. 

Special thanks to James Burnett and Cody Malaki for their assistance in writing this article.