Page 3265 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
And without proper recycling and education, the government is merely swapping one environmental problem for another.
Another common but toxic household waste item is batteries. Batteries are made up of heavy metals and other toxic elements, including nickel, cadmium, mercury, nickel metal hydride and lead acid. It is these elements that can threaten our environment if they are not properly discarded or disposed of and recycled. Unfortunately, batteries tend to end up in landfill and incinerators and leak into the environment, causing serious health risks to humans, animals and vegetation.
Each year Australians discard about 8,000 tonnes of used batteries. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, batteries are the most common form of hazardous waste disposed of by Australian households, with 97 per cent of these being disposed of by the usual household rubbish collection. That is, in the ACT they are going to end up in our landfill.
So no-one here should be surprised that the Greens are arguing that the government needs to make recycling points available for fluorescent lights and batteries at government shopfronts and libraries. At the moment the only places to take these for proper recycling are the Mugga Lane or the Mitchell resource centres. This really is not adequate. I do not think many people are driving or bicycling down to these centres to recycle their light bulbs or batteries. I have also been told that the staff at these centres do not always appreciate that recycling exists there and tell people, “No, it does not happen; it just goes on landfill.”
We need readily accessible recycling points in places people can access, such as libraries. We are very surprised that the Chief Minister earlier dismissed this suggestion, saying that the hurdles to be overcome are too great. There are plenty of other locations that do in fact recycle batteries and light globes without problems. Beacon Lighting has recently completed a trial of recycling collections for light bulbs in its retail premises in Heidelberg in Melbourne. It simply used a four-foot fluoro-tube box and some high-top wheelie bins in the store. Coles has done it as well. And a quick internet search will reveal that many local councils and state governments, as well as other retail businesses such as IKEA, have introduced recycling points.
That is also the case with batteries. A battery recycling program has recently been established at the ANU, where batteries are collected, labelled and recycled. They have 20-litre plastic bins at the site. When they are full, the bins are sealed and returned to ANUgreen, which then transports them to MRI in Sydney. I am sure that Canberra, in general, can do as well as Coles, ANUgreen, IKEA et cetera.
Turning to e-waste, I am very pleased that Mr Corbell mentioned that earlier. Our statistics on recycling e-waste are pretty appalling. If you look at Australia as a whole, in 2008 there were seven million PCs available for recycling. Of those, only half a million were actually recycled: 1.6 million went to landfill and the remaining 5.4 million are collecting dust in people’s garages.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .