Waste Not Consulting has been involved with the Packaging Accord since early 2004, when it was contracted to write the Packaging Accord Sector Action Plan for the Recycling Operators of New Zealand (RONZ).
Then in 2005, Waste Not was contracted by Ministry for the Environment to undertake a desktop survey of packaging waste to landfill in New Zealand. This involved compiling and assessing all existing waste composition data and calculating the proportion of landfilled waste that is packaging material.
In 2005, Waste Not completed a project assisting RONZ with a Sustainable Management Fund project developing a methodology to gather and disseminate reliable national recycling data and information. The project focused on data relating to mass balance data and trends of annual estimated packaging waste to landfill. The methodologies currently used by PAC.NZ and the different sector groups were investigated and assessed, and the suitability of the current methodologies for monitoring recovery rates on an annual basis was evaluated.
Since the signing of the Accord, Waste Not Consulting has been assisting councils to meet local government's obligations under the Accord by measuring the proportion of packaging in waste streams during SWAP audits.