Page 3395 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
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We are working to make Canberra a more environmentally friendly, and cleaner, city. This includes tackling waste, particularly plastic waste. Australia has been captivated by the excellent ABC show, War on Waste. I know some of those on the opposite side of the chamber cannot stand up in this place to support the ABC, but War on Waste is an excellent educational program and is clearly one of the most popular shows on Australian TV for a reason: Australians are interested in working to reduce waste. People care about the health and wellbeing of our environment.
A recent airing of the show put the spotlight on single-use plastics and their detrimental impact on the environment, particularly straws and plastic bags. This is helping to raise awareness about the importance of reducing plastic waste and encouraging governments around the country—local, state, and federal—to take responsible steps to reduce waste.
The ACT government has made huge progress on waste minimisation. As outlined in the ACT waste management strategy, Towards a Sustainable Canberra: reducing waste and recovering resources to achieve a sustainable, carbon-neutral Canberra 2011–2025, the ACT government has a goal of zero recoverable waste sent to landfill. This means working to reduce waste across several areas.
With regard to garden waste the ACT government is rolling out our green bins program throughout the ACT, which has been incredibly successful. They are also very popular in the community and provide a great addition to people’s gardens. I have a fairly large garden at my home in Kambah, and I became an early adopter of the scheme as Kambah was part of the pilot with Weston Creek. It is an easy way of disposing of prunings, leaves, grass clippings and other green waste. That project was one of Labor’s key commitments at the 2016 election.
Another commitment was, of course, to introduce a container deposit scheme. The CDS is an excellent waste recycling initiative. Since 30 June people across our city have been able to collect containers and return them to various locations across Canberra for a 10-cent refund. Providing incentives is one of the most effective methods to increase the rate of recycling, particularly with drink containers. Research undertaken by the City of Sydney saw that a refund scheme for drinking containers was overwhelmingly the most motivating incentive for people to recycle.
This is important because drinking containers, often made of plastic, make up around 25 per cent of ACT litter by volume according to the 2015-16 national litter index. A key indicator of the success of the CDS is the fact that only a few days ago, less than two months after the launch of the scheme, more than one million containers have been returned, including 186,000 plastic containers. The millionth container was deposited by my Kambah neighbour Emily Scott. Well done, Emily. It is great to see local members of the community participating and recycling.
In addition to improving waste recovery, one of the key parts of the waste management strategy is to simply encourage less waste to be produced in the first place. Part of this is banning single-use plastic bags, among other issues. We have all seen the recent fiasco of the backflip of Coles supermarkets on reducing plastic bag
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