Page 1923 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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our plastic bag use by 1,132 tonnes. In 2017-18 alone, we reduced our use by 199 tonnes. This is equivalent to around 55 million plastic bags. This demonstrates the importance of regulation in helping to improve environmental outcomes.
With this bill we hope to expand the scope of plastic waste we can prevent by reducing the use of other unnecessary and problematic single-use plastic. Following extensive consultation, this bill proposes to phase out a range of other single-use plastic products. The first tranche of items to be phased out will include single-use plastic stirrers, cutlery and expanded polystyrene food and beverage containers such as plates, cups, bowls and “clamshell” takeaway containers. Over 90 per cent of the Canberra community supported phasing out these items.
While the bill is focused on reduction and not substitution, the items that we are targeting have readily available and well understood alternatives. As one example, community consultation identified the phase-out of polystyrene foam containers as the very highest priority, with 94 per cent of the surveyed community supporting a phase-out. This problematic material fragments and disperses in the natural environment when littered, creating small pieces of plastic. Expanded polystyrene foam containers cannot be recycled through the ACT’s recycling bins and must be sent to landfill. There are a range of other sustainable packaging products, from cardboard to paper, that can easily replace this problematic plastic.
In preparing this bill the ACT government undertook analysis of the impacts of our first tranche phase-out. This analysis showed us that there are already alternatives to single-use plastic stirrers and polystyrene containers that are both more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. The best option to reduce the impacts of single-use plastic and alternatives is to avoid these altogether wherever possible. We want Canberrans to reduce their consumption of waste; we do not just want one product substituted for another one, plastic or otherwise. The second tranche of products will be phased out over a further 12 months, including single-use plastic fruit and vegetable “barrier bags”, oxo-degradable plastic products and single-use plastic straws—except for people who need them.
The ACT government will move to phase these out after 12 months of the first tranche being implemented. The consultation indicated strong support for the phase-out of these single-use plastic products. However, the ACT government and people with a disability and their advocates have acknowledged from the start that detailed work will be required to get the exemption to the ban on straws right, for people who need them. Phasing straws out in the second tranche allows us to continue working on the implementation of the ban on single-use plastic straws and exemptions, until we get it right for people with a disability. Once we have this right, these items can subsequently be banned through regulation.
In the long term we are looking closely at the phase-out of plastic-lined single-use coffee cups and lids; single-use plastic dinnerware such as plates, cups and bowls; and other single-use plastic products, including boutique/heavyweight plastic bags greater than 35 microns thick, and cotton earbuds with plastic sticks.
Madam Speaker, this bill sets out a framework to phase out other problematic and unnecessary plastic products in the future, with appropriate consultation. It
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