Page 527 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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paper that is ready to be recycled. We have seen over the last few weeks, particularly with Koomarri and with other groups, that paper awaiting recycling is actually now mounting in Canberra. So at one end of the system we have people prepared to recycle paper and on the other end we do not have it being used.
To make sure that the system works - and this ought to be implemented immediately - we shall have to look at purchasing large volumes of recycled paper for photocopying and for use within our own administration, and to encourage others to do the same so that the recycled paper manufacturers can then start purchasing the paper that is mounting. I think that is a very important part of what can be done, even while this committee is looking at all the issues.
With reference to oil and the recycling of oil, I had the joy to go and visit the Mugga Lane tip the other day on a guided tour, thanks to Mrs Grassby - and it was greatly appreciated. I noticed there a series of new tanks being put in for recycled oil, the tanks themselves being recycled from another job. The approach to the oil is very important.
However, we do have the problem that about 2.5 million litres per year came into Canberra - that is all types of oil, by the way, including heating and so forth - and 750,000 litres are recycled. That is quite a good rate considering the difficulties, but we still cannot help asking where the other one and a bit million litres of oil go? That is a lot of oil going somewhere. So there is still work to be done.
I think we need to ensure perhaps a network - in fact, one has already started - of service stations with facilities for recycling oil, because there are plenty of people like me who change their own oil and then need to find a place to put the oil. In my own case, I put it in a four-gallon drum and eventually when I go to the dump - apart from the Ainslie station which does not have that facility - manage to drain that oil into the recycling tip. I think that is the approach that we need to look at, and we need to look at education. I think it is very important that the whole education question be taken into account by the committee.
Let me go down to another area for recycling that nobody has mentioned at this stage, and that is the possibility of recycling sewerage ash from the Lower Molonglo. I happen to be familiar with this particular area on account of the fact that I grew up with my father being chief sewerage design engineer in South Australia. He always used to say to us when we were feeling uncomfortable about saying that our father was a sewerage design engineer, "To other people it might be shit; to us it is food and clothing".
Now, similarly, let me say that it is possible to have sewerage ash pelletised, and that committee must look into
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