Page 574 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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example, the Australian sustainable schools initiative has been a great success in educating children and young people about the benefits and the practices of effective recycling. We now have, in a first for Australia, 100 per cent participation by all ACT schools.
The government’s ACTsmart business and ACTsmart office recycling programs have provided carefully targeted education to help Canberra businesses reduce their waste to landfill, including achieving remarkable improvements at a number of businesses. For example, the Gungahlin McDonald’s have reduced their waste to landfill by 54 per cent through their involvement in the ACT government’s ACTsmart program. This is an international company with a substantial environmental program seeking to achieve best practice. The ACT’s long-running community engagement and education programs have contributed to the ACT’s nation leading rates of household recycling, garden waste recovery and an extremely low contamination rate of our recycling streams.
Finally, with regard to green waste, it is generally accepted that residual MRFs or third bin systems would not produce a compost of as high a quality as the ACT’s existing green waste composters. Our current green waste composters produce marketable high quality composts for commercial customers, recovering around 90 per cent of the green—that is, garden waste—waste generated currently in our city. This is why Hyder recommended in the report that the government should maintain this existing and highly effective garden waste recovery system and not destroy this system by introducing a green bin or third bin as some wish to advocate.
The Greens’ proposal would cost more; a third bin proposal would cost more. It would produce lower quality compost at a higher cost than the existing system and it would undermine the existing sustainable garden waste industry which employs local Canberrans and which has emerged around green waste recycling in the territory. A residual MRF is no substitute for education and source separation and the territory’s existing and effective green waste recovery systems. The government has never suggested that it is. It is a viable and credible complementary approach and therefore the government will continue with its education programs.
Turning to the quality of material that can be produced by a residual MRF, a residual MRF can produce a good compost of significant value for soil rehabilitation, forestry and a range of agricultural applications. There is substantial demand for these composts, as evidenced by the current sales of these products from Australia’s compost producing MRFs currently.
The government has not at this time committed funds to a residual waste material recovery facility. Based on Hyder’s suggested lead time for this infrastructure, it is expected that no process to implement a residual MRF would be required until 2017. This is clear in the waste strategy and so, in this sense, the Greens’ motion is a little out of context.
The contracts for rubbish removal this year will be designed to achieve the best value for ACT ratepayers. Exhaustive policy analysis has shown that a household organic waste collection service is not compatible with a cost-effective waste management
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