24/03/2006
- The Government will fund for another three years
the clean-up of unwanted and dangerous agricultural
chemicals, Environment Minister David Benson-Pope
announced today.
The Ministry for the Environment
and 13 regional councils have been working together
since 2003 to collect agricultural chemicals, mainly
from rural properties. New Zealand will have safely
disposed of 225 tonnes of old, unwanted and potentially
dangerous agricultural chemicals by June.
“The material we have removed
is really the nasty stuff that councils do not collect
through their regular waste disposal facilities,"
said Mr Benson-Pope while in Blenheim this morning
viewing first-hand the collection of unwanted agri-chemicals.
"Most of these chemicals
are ‘persistent organic pollutants’ – so named because
they do not break down in the environment. They
include pesticides like DDT, dieldrin, PCBs and
dioxins.
"These were banned in New
Zealand some time ago but there is still some left,
sitting mainly in sheds and garages. The Ministry
for the Environment estimates that 175 tonnes of
this material still remains to be collected after
June of this year. It won’t go away if we don’t
clean it up,” said Mr Benson-Pope.
To date, the Ministry for the
Environment has contributed $2.5 million through
its Sustainable Management Fund to finance the clean-up
project.
“We will keep working with local
government to clean-up New Zealand. The Ministry
for the Environment will fund this project for another
three years,” Mr Benson-Pope confirmed.
New Zealand agreed with other
countries in 2004 to a permanent ban on persistent
organic pollutants, by signing the international
Stockholm Convention. These pollutants are now banned
from importation, production and use in this country.
The Ministry for the Environment
has published a report that estimates the amounts
of old and unwanted agricultural chemicals left
in each region. This report is available on the
Ministry for the Environment website at www.mfe.govt.nz
