The picture painted to me about NZ was green or 100% Pure. I assumed NZ would not be as progressive as Europe, but at least on par with the USA, which we can debate all day about whether or not is environmentally responsible. Sadly, from my viewpoint with respect to NZ’s environmentalism, the Green title is not quite accurate.
This country is clean with respect to the waterways and land, but any country would be if it had only been populated within the past 150 years and was sparsely populated at that. To be blunt, of course NZ is “100% pure”; it hasn’t had time to be ruined by people. But if they don’t take some actions and look at the errors of other countries, they are going to be well on their way to all the issues the rest of the world is facing.
I present the following examples to illustrate my concern.
Recycling-
On one hand there is an option to recycle at home with bins provided and pick up available, but on the other hand you’ll be hard-pressed to find a recycling bin on the street to recycle that bottle of juice you just bought. When traveling I usually store the bottles in my car until I get to a hostel, which has excellent recycling, or until I arrive back home. Also, people don’t seem super concerned about recycling whereas in Europe it is a major issue.
Transport-
Public transport here on the whole is pretty poor. Trains were privatized and therefore many of the routes are now gone and most cities have pretty inadequate bus systems in place (although ChCh is an exception), which leads to a nation of car drivers. Many families are 2 car families and NZ is notorious for driving their cars into the ground, which means terrible exhaust systems belching out air pollution. In fact, NZ has the second highest prevalence of asthma in a developed nation, behind the UK, and a theory is the number of diesel cars on the road is a factor in this problem.
In fact, 92% of trips are by car, over 1/3 of all car rides cover less than 2 kilometers, and 2/3 are shorter than 5 kilometers. The average age of a car is 12 years, which implies poor fuel efficiency (kilometers per liter) (Ministry for the Environment, 2006).
Uninsulated Homes-
Many of the homes here lack a decent standard of insulation, which leads to frigid homes in winter because of a loss of heat. Talk about a waste of natural resources when all the heat you pump into your house proceeds to fly right outside.
While these are my observations Reuters also had similar thoughts. Check out the following article entitled “New Zealand’s Environment more Khaki than Green” here. www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSSP29256220080131?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
100% Pure or 100% Propaganda.