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Expand Circular Services

WM New Zealand leads in waste management with a circular economy approach, focusing on waste minimisation, resource recovery, and material repurposing through innovative, sustainable practices.

Whakanuia nga ratonga porohita

WM New Zealand launched Circular Services across Aotearoa in 2023, investing in sustainable waste solutions. Navigate rising costs from government levies, emissions trading, and inflation with our cost-control solutions. We empower New Zealanders to recycle more, enhancing environmental impact. Tailored to each region, our innovations include composting food and green waste, addressing complexities like packaging and meat.

We partner with supermarkets aiming for zero food waste by 2025, using worm farms and food rescue. We recycle plastics locally and overseas, like large items through our plastic-eating Te taniwha o te kai kirihou.

In construction, we boost recovery rates and support Green Star standards. Harness biogas for energy and convert diesel trucks to electric at our EV Innovation Hub.

Key Objectives

Partner and innovate to create circular solutions at scale
A preferred government partner for co-investment
Support our customers and suppliers to embrace circular solutions
Our own operations become more circular

Material Issues

Circular economy
Collaborative partnerships & innovation
Diversifying the service offering
Ethical value chain
Funding opportunities
Measurement & reporting
Recycling & resource recovery

Objective	Actions	KPIs	Status	Progress in 2023
2.1 Partner and innovate to create circular solutions at scale	Identify and secure partnerships for the circular economy and recycling opportunities	Initial list and quantify opportunity from potential recoverable materials created	Achieved	Battery recovery project is underway – evaluation report completed and commercial modelling and viability is being assessed. PVC, HDPE plastics recovery and processing. Aluminium collection and processing.
		Identify potential partnerships for circular economy and recycling opportunities, solving waste location and volume challenges	Achieved	Joint venture in place with Aliaxis Group, Plastics Recycling New Zealand. Recovery of untreated timber from transfer stations for processing at Living Earth (Auckland and Waikato) going well. All Heart launch of new circular services to deconstruct renovations and reuse. Tyre recycling processing and logistics agreement with Treadlite.
2.2 Co-fund applications to bring circular solutions to New Zealand at scale	Three initiative grants filed	Three initiative grants filed	Achieved	Three initiative grants filed in 2023. Planning for construction of two new B&C Resource Recovery facilities in Auckland is underway.
2.3 Support our customers and suppliers to embrace circular solutions	Standardised behaviour change approach to help customers adopt new circular services	Publish initial release of behaviour change support for municipal customers	Achieved	Reusable marketing and communications templates and run sheets provided for rollout of Eastern Waikato contract and provided to MfE as content for their behaviour change toolkit.
2.4 Our own operations become more circular	Provide insight on material flows in the circular economy	Deep dive analysis on providing chain of custody data for three material streams	Achieved	Achieved OCC, HDPE and mixed paper analysis completed
2.4 Our own operations become more circular	Our operations eliminate waste and circulate products and materials at the highest value	Three initiatives implemented	Achieved	Changed FlexiBin sleeve to cardboard Wheelie bin repair tool – wheel removing tool Untreated wood separation at transfer

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