Page 1222 - Week 03 - Thursday, 31 March 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
in the commercial sector, promoting innovation in resource recovery and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
On 8 December 2010 the draft ACT sustainable waste strategy was released. This strategy takes an integrated approach to managing waste across the ACT, considering the connections between the collection, transport, sorting, processing and markets as well as between sectors. The strategy emphasises the waste management hierarchy that encourages people to reduce the amount of waste they generate, to re-use goods such as clothing and furniture, to recycle waste material such as paper and glass into new products, to recover resources such as energy from wood and bio-solids and, lastly, to dispose of any remaining waste safely in the landfill.
The draft strategy includes 25 strategies involving the adoption of best practice resource recovery approaches and innovative technologies. It places significant emphasis on increasing recycling and resource recovery. The waste strategy aims to increase resource recovery from over 70 per cent to over 90 per cent via three major steps: boosting commercial waste recycling, taking resource recovery to over 80 per cent; recovering organic wastes and sorting residual waste streams, taking resource recovery to over 85 per cent; and adopting energy from waste technologies, taking resource recovery to over 90 per cent, matching world’s best practice.
Many options for increasing recycling and resource recovery are explored in the draft strategy. For example, resource recovery can also be improved through free drop-off facilities for electronic waste, education and awareness, procurement policies, developing markets for recyclable materials and using appropriate pricing and regulation as a disincentive to landfill. The draft strategy supports source separation of resources and recycling of materials for their highest use.
Rather than focusing on technology-driven solutions, the actions in the draft strategy range from education, reducing litter and dumping, boosting recycling, recovering organic waste, introducing free drop-off facilities for electronic waste, improving the management of hazardous waste and strengthening our regulatory regime. The draft strategy does commit the government to exploring waste-to-energy technologies but it does not in any way limit its consideration to those technologies.
A third bin for garden waste was among the potential actions considered in the preparation of the draft strategy. While the analysis to date has shown that a residual waste material recovery facility would recover considerably more waste at lower cost, the government is undertaking more detailed analysis and has not ruled out a third bin or other options for recovering organic and garden waste. The draft strategy seeks to reduce the amount of waste generated in the ACT through individual strategies such as awareness-raising campaigns, promoting re-use through ACT businesses and charities and encouraging on-site re-use of construction waste.
Submissions closed in late February. Twenty-nine submissions were received and these are currently being assessed for possible inclusion in the final strategy.
Canberrans are fantastic recyclers in the home environment, with more than 95 per cent of Canberrans involved in the practice and 40,000 tonnes of recyclable
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video