New Zealanders use over nine million trees worth of paper each year and while New Zealand's recycling rates well compared to other countries a lot still ends up at the dump, the party says. New Zealand folds, shreds, prints and flushes away over 340,000 tonnes of paper each year, with 13 trees needed to be made for every tonne.
Of the several hundred thousand tonnes of paper Kiwis get through each year, over 70 percent of it ends up at recycling centres, where it is sorted, baled and then either recycled or sent overseas. Each tonne of paper that slips through takes up four cubic metres of landfill and that adds up.
However, it commends the efforts some New Zealand companies are making citing Officemax as an example. The company has paper quotas and uses double-sided printing and then its paper waste ends up at the zoo, where the orang-utans do the recycling.
The Green party says it only takes a bit of extra effort to make sure the paper we print on ends up in the right place.
