Page 529 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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There are a number of issues that people have already raised and I suppose we are all in agreement on a number of them but I think the committee should raise and look at ways of improving the environment here in the ACT, starting particularly with the ACT Administration. Everyone welcomes the fact that the ACT Administration has taken steps at this stage to use recycled paper products wherever possible. The need for the use of recycled paper I think is well understood by everyone in the house. I believe just the ACT Administration alone used some 30,000 reams of photocopy paper last year. That is an enormous waste of resources when recycled paper could be used for this purpose.
There is another thing that should be looked at. I understand that the paper that comes out of the new printers that we are currently using actually is unsuitable for recycling because of the laser technique. Perhaps in future some consideration could be given in contracts for purchasing new printing equipment to the use of printers that operate with paper that can be regenerated.
There are a number of further steps that the ACT Administration could take. I believe the Administration and other agencies, such as schools, throughout the Territory could initiate steps within the office to segregate wastepaper for recycling from other office waste. I believe quite an effective recycling program is being used in the Commonwealth Centre in Adelaide. The idea is that employees have a tray for clean used paper that they put aside, apart from things like carbon paper and other lunch wrappers and God knows what. That material is kept separate and collected at the end of the day. We may look at appointing recycling officers within the Administration itself to coordinate that for each floor or each office agency or each school.
There are lots of other things that we need to do. The Administration, I think, needs to actually take a positive step in allocating the promotion of recycling and resource conservation. Leaflets on recycling and composting could accompany the regular bills that go out from the Administration in relation to electricity or rates or whatever - notices do go out to all the population - and this would increase public awareness of these matters.
Many other things need to be done. I think we need to review the location of the recycling depots. To be effective, recycling depots need to be convenient to people. Canberra, I believe, has the best public awareness of the need for recycling of any major city in Australia and whilst the will might be there, there is certainly a need for people to be able to do things conveniently and easily.
I think such depots should be included in the Civic area, with the re-establishment of a depot at the Fyshwick markets, moving the one in the Belconnen town centre area
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