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Slimming Your Waste: Towards Total Cost Assessment of Waste Management in Christchurch City

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Executive Summary

In response to the Local Government Amendment Act No. 4 (1996), and national policy trends, the Christchurch City Council introduced their Draft Waste Management Plan for Solid and Hazardous Waste in 1998 containing the following principle:

The real costs of waste management shall include social, environmental and economic costs and these will be assessed and reported annually.

This principle has led to this study, which has the aim of providing a framework for the assessment of the total cost of waste management in Christchurch.

Waste management and its effects on biophysical, social and economic characteristics of the environment is one of a large number of complex and interconnected problems. As a response to the complexity of the issues, the approach chosen for this study is to place the issues into their political, institutional and environmental context, and through analysis of this system define the key issues that must be taken into account when implementing a total cost assessment framework. Some of the issues identified are used to develop criteria against which to analyse existing approaches to total cost assessment. The results of this analysis indicate that no single existing approach fulfils the requirements for a total cost assessment framework for Christchurch City waste management. It is therefore necessary to design an original framework that can take into account the important issues relating to waste management in Christchurch City.

The framework developed in this report provides a structure for the assessment of total cost, including tools for the identification and measurement of effects. This structure includes the definition of a matrix providing for the identification of the potential effects of waste management activities on characteristics of the environment. Guidelines are provided for decision-making regarding the use of measurement tools and the conversion of non-monetary effects into potentially comparable quantitative units.

The framework enables comprehensive identification of effects, allows the integration of most current effects assessment and management systems, and provides opportunities for strategic applications of the information gathered. In order to effectively implement and apply the framework, five high priority steps for Christchurch City Council are recommended.


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