The Cook Islands relies primarily on the disposal of waste to landfills, but the amount of waste Cook Islands receive is exceeding the capacity of the landfill and to continue to dispose of waste to landfill has significant costs, both environmental and financial.
To reduce waste, the Cook Islands is working with PacWastePlus - a project funded by the EU and implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) - to enable long-term, self-financing collection and recovery of recyclable items. The Advance Recovery Fee and Deposit (ARFD) is a mechanism to provide an incentive for consumers to return recoverable items to a collection depot, and fund the collection and recycling of these items.
Overall, the ARFD project aims to create an enabling environment to help improve the collection, management and recycling of waste entering the Cook Islands, offering a way to ensure its long-term, self-sustaining management is no longer completely reliant on variable government funding.
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