Public Awareness of the Waste Minimisation Act and Waste Disposal Levy – UMR Research Ltd
July 2011, Ref. CR 116
The Ministry contracted UMR Research Ltd to collect benchmark data from 750 New Zealanders as part of a CATI (computer assisted telephone interview) omnibus survey about:
- levels of public awareness of the Waste Minimisation Act and waste disposal levy
- the public’s awareness of how the levy is passed on to them (transparency of levy cost)
- the main ways the public disposed of their household waste in the past 12 months.
Public knowledge of the Waste Minimisation Act was extremely low, with 93% saying they knew ‘not that much’ or ‘nothing at all’ about it. Only 2.4% were able to correctly state $10/tonne was the correct amount of the levy, which represents less than 1% of the population. The main way in which people disposed of their rubbish was via kerbside collection of council rubbish bags (44%) followed by council wheelie-bins (30%), private wheelie-bins (11%), and drop-off at local transfer station or landfill (4%). The other main ways in which rubbish was disposed of were burning, recycling, composting and burying.
An evaluation of stakeholder perceptions on the implementation of the Waste Minimisation Act is also available.
Availability
Last updated: 4 August 2011
