Page 2523 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 31 July 2019
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MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for Community Services and Facilities, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Transport and City Services) (3.48): I thank Ms Cheyne for the motion and welcome the opportunity to talk about the impacts of disposable products, including disposable nappies, incontinence products and other sanitary items. I have made many statements to the Assembly on the subject of waste—there have been many motions in the Assembly—and for good reason. Canberrans in particular and communities right around Australia and across the world are becoming increasingly aware of the unsustainable pace of our consumption and production of products that very quickly become waste.
This has become very clear to me as the consultation on the phasing out single-use plastics discussion paper has progressed. And it is increasingly an issue at the international and national levels, which is why we are working with the commonwealth and other states and territories to deliver an action plan under the national waste policy. We have high ambitions to reduce our waste in the ACT. And this is something that we are continuing to explore following the release of the waste feasibility study roadmap last year. The study looked carefully at our existing targets, including the goal of increasing resource recovery up to 90 per cent by 2025.
While recycling is important, and has never been more important, at the top of the waste hierarchy is waste avoidance. That means that it is always better to avoid making waste in the first place, especially when that waste is genuinely problematic, unnecessary and avoidable. This is easy to say and not always as easy to do but the little changes and tweaks that we all make as Canberrans, more than 420,000 of us, can really add up.
What about nappies and sanitary items? We have some data on nappies already. For example, our last waste audit found that nappies make up around 6.1 per cent of the household waste stream in the ACT. That is more than 4,000 tonnes per annum. The figure is even higher if nappies from commercial premises are counted or if other sanitary waste such as pads, tampons and adult incontinence products are counted as well.
We also know that we have a growing population who are likely to use a greater volume of these kinds of products as time goes by. For example, 6,207 babies were born in the ACT in the 2016-17 financial year, and there are now around 23,000 children below the age of three in the ACT. National Geographic has previously estimated that the average baby goes through about 3,800 nappies in the early years, and it may even be much higher than that. But on those conservative figures alone, 23½ million nappies could be making their way into the ACT’s landfill every year.
We know that around half of Canberra’s population may need sanitary items at some stage of their life. This is not just pads and tampons, although these items are a significant portion. In fact, research shows that an average woman could expect to use around 10,000 to 12,000 disposable menstrual products in her lifetime. But it is not just these products going to landfill. We should also have in mind the kinds of products that support people with various medical conditions such as urinary or faecal
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