Product Stewardship and Water Efficiency Labelling: New Tools to Reduce Waste

Foreword

1 Introduction and Context

2 Issues Arising from the Submissions

3 Work Subsequent to the Discussion Document

4 Summary of Submissions

5 Submissions on Product Stewardship

6 Submissions on Water Efficiency Labelling

Appendix: List of Submissions

2 Issues Arising from the Submissions

2.1 Product stewardship

The submissions broadly reinforce the Ministry for the Environment's preferred option, which would use voluntary mechanisms, with regulation as a safety net to fill the gaps. The submissions also highlight areas where further policy work is needed. Each product area is different, and in many areas the markets are highly competitive and constantly changing. This means ensuring that any policy can be effectively and efficiently applied in all the areas where there are waste problems. Industry-led and voluntary schemes have the advantage of using industry knowledge and expertise to resolve environmental issues relating to products. In the regulatory area, detail is critical.

Following are the major themes that emerged from the comments.

• Voluntary mechanisms are clearly preferred by industry, sector groups and councils.
• Regulation that assists voluntary schemes and provides a backstop for gaps in voluntary action was supported by just over half of the submissions, including over half of the submissions from industry.
• Many submissions highlighted the need for regulation to be well designed and subject to careful analysis before it is implemented.
• Many submissions highlighted work in product stewardship they are involved with, covering a number of product areas. From this it became clear that there are different waste issues for different products, and often the market structure differs as well. These differences need to be reflected in any product stewardship policy.

The major issues requiring resolution include:

• a clear definition of product stewardship − what do we want to achieve?
• what does 'backstop' mean?
• how does approval of a voluntary scheme work?
• what agency should administer the scheme?
• the problem of parallel imports.

2.2 Water efficiency labelling

A number of technical issues were raised that need to be addressed to accommodate differences between New Zealand water supplies and those used in most of Australia. These issues will be discussed with New Zealand industry and the Australians.