Anti-plastic campaigners and plastic producers are both critical of the four-year plan to phase out the harmful packaging, saying it falls short on plastic bottles and PVC.
Photo: 123RF
The government's released details of its three-stage plan to delete difficult-to-recycle items from shelves and keep an estimated two-billion single-use plastics out of landfills each year.
There will be no more PVC meat trays, plastic cotton buds or polystyrene takeaway containers by late next year, then in mid-2023, the country will wave good-bye to plastic fruit labels, straws, produce bags, cutlery, bowls and plates.
In mid-2025 the government will outlaw all other PVC and polystyrene food and drink packaging, while it is also talking to sector experts about options to replace plastic-lined coffee cups and wet wipes containing plastic.
University of Auckland Professor of Physical Chemistry Duncan McGillivary said four years ago, that plan would have been "inconceivable".
"I'm glad we're moving in this direction," he said.
"There's a lot of research going into how to reduce plastic problems once they're in the wild but it's very difficult. Actually the simplest and best solution is to stop the plastic getting into the environment in the first place."
About 8000 people and businesses gave feedback on the government's draft proposal last year, including Greenpeace.
It's now criticising the omission of plastic drink bottles from the final scheme, after a 2019 study found the average household threw out 188 of them each year.
Greenpeace plastics campaigner Juressa Lee said the government has been working on a container recycling scheme to cut that number down, with no announcements yet.
She would like them banned and replaced with refillable alternatives, which she said would be in line with what the government's already doing for other plastic products.
"I'm hoping that's coming. I was disappointed to not see it. But I think that the government understands that it's one of the worst culprits in our waste," she said.
"And the government is indicating that these hard to recycle single use plastic items - that the answer to that is to ban them, to turn the tap off. I think that's an indication that they understand that recycling doesn't work. It definitely doesn't work on its own."
Greenpeace is criticising the omission of plastic drink bottles from the final scheme, after a 2019 study found the average household threw out 188 of them each year. Photo: 123rf
The plastics industry has also found a shortcoming.
Plastics NZ chief executive Rachel Barker said it was unclear why the government has banned the hard-to-recycle PVC packaging for food and beverages, but not other products.
"PVC - it's quite cheap and strong and it can be fully flexible or fully rigid. So it's used in a huge amount of packaging both within the food and beverage and outside of that sector. So what they're doing by only phasing out the food and beverage packaging is not solving the underlying problem," she said.
"We want to get it out of kerbside collection. By having it in general retail it still means we're going to have it in kerbside."
Duncan McGillivary is unsure why businesses are waiting for guidance from the government.
"I think if I were in the packaging industry I'd be looking one step ahead and thinking actually if we can find alternatives then maybe we don't need to wait to be told by the government. We can start making these movements already," he said.
That is something supermarkets are doing - meaning shoppers might see changes before the government's single-use plastic deadlines.
Foodstuffs and Countdown say they have already started phasing out single use plastics.
Both have switched to recyclable meat trays, and Countdown's stopped stocking plastic straws, plastic cutlery and products containing glitter.
"We do need help with innovation" - Countdown sustainability general manager Kiri Hannifin
Countdown sustainability general manager Kiri Hannifin told Morning Report that problematic for packaging included products for some sour cream, yoghurt, and cream cheese, those in deli section, fruit stickers, and ice cream containers - which are set to be gone by end of the year.
Hannifin expected they would swap to RPET packaging, a more easily recyclable plastic, but said it might be a bit more costly.
"It's the egregious part of it all, it's that plastic is so cheap and that's why it's been so prolifically used in the last 50 years. So when you move to better more responsible packaging, that is more expensive but it think that's right and I think that's the cost business needs to bear.
Some products were going to prove tricky to swap but not impossible, she said.
"Cakes, like birthday cakes, that come to us frozen - they're in PVC. The reason they're in PVC, which is not a good plastic, is because it performs very well when it's frozen, it's flexible and we haven't been able to work out how to package that in a way that will get to our stores and keep safe and fresh, and get to our customers' fridges in a different form of packaging."
If they could not stock certain products in environmentally-friendly packaging, Countdown would not be stocking it, she said.
"But we do need help with innovation, not just for our business, but for the whole country and it's sort of a solution for everybody. But it's not just the packaging we also urgently need to sort out our recycling infrastructure."
Foodstuffs has quit selling plastic cotton buds, and just announced a ban on plastic produce bags from all its Pak 'n Save, New World and Four Squares across the country, instead trailing different types of reusable bags and crates.
South Island chief executive Steve Anderson said it was already working toward its own four-year goal.
"By 2025 all the plastic packaging in New World, Pak 'n Save and Four Square all throughout the country will either be 100 percent reusable, recyclable or compostable," he said.
The government has launched a $50 million plastics innovation fund to support projects that manage plastic waste effectively.