Page 3913 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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environment for future generations. It is a responsible plan that will support a just transition and support households over the next 25 years—not all at once, but over 25 years.
The ACT climate change strategy has a goal of achieving zero net carbon emissions by 2045. As the ACT hits 100 per cent renewable electricity, the third largest source of emissions will come from waste. The ACT government has some of the most ambitious waste reduction targets in the country, with a plan to divert 90 per cent of waste from landfill by 2025.
The government released the ACT waste feasibility study in May 2018, which included a recommendation that the green bin service, which we have rolled out to the whole of Canberra, be expanded to include food waste. This included a survey of household waste showing that approximately 37 per cent of waste bin content is organic food waste. Approximately 45 per cent of organic waste is generated by households, with the remainder generated by the commercial and industrial sectors. When residential and commercial food organic waste is combined, this amounts to approximately 40,000 tonnes of food waste going to landfill every year. It is a clear area we need to tackle to reduce the amount of waste producing emissions in landfill.
When food goes into landfill, in anaerobic conditions it turns into methane, a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane generated by organic waste decomposing in landfill is a significant cause of greenhouse gas emissions and is estimated to account for around 2.6 per cent of the ACT’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The ACT government is planning for a food organics collection service to deal with this waste. We are looking at rolling out an education campaign on food waste avoidance, which was funded in the budget, as well as looking at where we process food and a site facility available for that, and how we can sell the compost or other material onto markets. This will provide real benefits to Canberrans in providing an extra service to households while also reducing emissions.
As highlighted in Mr Gupta’s motion, a key priority of the ACT’s climate strategy is to improve livability and to adapt to climate change. That is why it is incredibly important that we invest in ensuring that we plant more trees across the city. We have 766,000 trees in the city; it is one of the things that contribute to the character and livability of our city.
We know that over coming decades, particularly as the climate gets hotter and drier, we are going to see some of those trees decline and come to the end of their life. So we need to plant more trees. That is why I was very pleased that in the budget we were able to fund 17,000 more trees, which is the largest tree planting this century by the government. And that is just over four years; there will be more trees planted beyond that.
We are currently in the process of developing an urban forest strategy, which, combined with the living infrastructure plan, will set out a vision and pathway for how we can plant more trees and reach the targets that have been set out in the living
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