Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Local residents in my electorate of Boothby care very deeply about our local environment. We have the best of South Australia's—and indeed Australia's—natural environment in Boothby, from the foothills, including Australia's second-oldest national park, the Belair National Park, through to Adelaide's best stretch of coastline, from Marino in the south to Glenelg North in the north. So many local volunteers take great care of our coastal dunes, vegetation and beaches, and the many parks and reserves throughout our suburbs and our hills. It's no surprise, then, that because so many residents care about our local environment they're also very interested in recycling.

Today I want to recognise some local leaders in recycling and talk about what the Morrison government is doing to support and increase recycling efforts across Boothby, the state and our nation. So many of my local schools are leading the way with recycling initiatives. At St Leonards Primary School in Glenelg North, under the leadership of Principal Dave Henty-Smith and with the assistance of a Commonwealth Local Schools Community Fund grant, the school community is implementing a whole-school waste management plan that will reduce, reuse and recycle all the school's waste. I can't wait to visit St Leonards primary as the project progresses to get updates as to their innovative work, which I hope we'll be able to share with other local schools.

At Mitcham Primary School, as part of their commitment to a more sustainable future, Principal Scott Greenshields and the local school community have begun eating inside and recycling soft plastic waste and food scraps. Parents are encouraged to minimise the amount of disposable wrappers they send to school in lunchboxes and to accept food scraps from the school for their compost bins at home.

In terms of my local business community, Jetty Road in Brighton is leading the way and leading the state by reducing waste and increasing recycling, and by working towards banning single-use plastics. I was delighted to be able to take the Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management, the Hon. Trevor Evans, to visit Jetty Road recently. Minister Evans is passionate about our environment and reducing waste, and we met with the South Australian Minister for the Environment, the Hon. David Speirs MP, and local business The Seller Door, where owner Tom Roger showed us the different products here now it uses instead of plastics for all aspects of his cafe. Of particular note are the cornstarch straws, which are literally indistinguishable from plastic straws. They're a great product which patrons love almost as much as they love the wonderful food and excellent coffee. Just around the corner, the Brighton Surf Lifesaving Club is also working towards banning single-use plastics. This is a big task, given the huge events they hold each year, including the Brighton Jetty Classic and their sculptures by the sea, which are visited by literally tens of thousands of people.

Local government is also doing its part with the cities of Holdfast Bay and Marion partnering with Onkaparinga to build a new recycling facility in Adelaide's southern suburbs to minimise the use of landfill and improve recycling. I have regularly met with the Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management to express my support for this innovative project that aims to reuse recycled products and materials locally and that will create up to 37 jobs and process about 60,000 tonnes of waste product each year. The City of Mitcham has a great recycling project already in action with the resurfaced car park at the Kenilworth footy club at St Marys, which uses porous bitumen that includes 50 per cent recycled tyres and provides much better drainage and watering for trees and plants. The permeable pavement used four tonnes of tyre derived aggregates, the equivalent of diverting 500 passenger tyres from the waste stream.

Federally, we are doing our part too. The federal government has provided $133 million over 10 years for the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre, which targets food waste to help secure the sustainability of Australia's food industry. The home of the CRC is right in the heart of Boothby at the University of Adelaide Waite Campus. I recently visited there to chat to them about their excellent work. Our $167 million Australian Recycling Investment plan will increase Australia's recycling rates, tackle plastic waste and litter and accelerate work on a new battery recycling scheme in the years to come. Working with the states, we have banned the export of plastic waste, paper, glass and tyres. We have also phased out microbeads, and I note that 94 per cent of cosmetic and personal care products in Australia are now microbead free. These measures illustrate just some of the innovative ways we are all tackling waste, and they are further enhanced by our $100 million Environment Restoration Fund, which will support practical action on waste and recycling, the protection of rivers, waterways and coasts, and provide further support for our threatened native species.

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