David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, the associated bills and consequential and transitional provisions. Most Australians know the status quo. It's a quick and easy process. You put stuff in the bin when you're finished. If you are a conscientious citizen of Australia you separate it into the red bin, the green bin, the yellow bin. Then that's about the last thing that you think about. But we do have a massive problem in this country. We have huge amounts of waste that historically we have shipped interstate, shipped into landfill or shipped overseas. It's really good that we are now looking after our own waste—cleaning up our own mess.

These bills will put effect to that by announcing, in a sequential fashion, the cessation of unprocessed waste being exported overseas. I think it shows that our nation has grown up. Everyone's aware of the recycling of plastics and other sorts of waste that end up in our waterways, or end up in the oceans of the world, or end up in giant eddies in the Northern Hemisphere, or down the throat of sea life. Even leading to death or drowning of birds, seals, fish—you name it. The small particles of the plastic can end up in living animals. It is a game changer that we have got this sequential legislative ban on exporting unprocessed waste.

This legislation will put effect to our National Waste Policy Action Plan, of which there are seven main streams. As I mentioned unprocessed plastic waste, paper, glass and tyres will not be able to be exported anymore. We have a goal of reducing waste by 10 per cent for every Australian by 2030. Each of us produce, by all the things that are provided for us, 2.7 tonnes of waste each a year, so that means reducing our own personal waste by 300 kilos per year. If you think how much you put in your bin that is a lot of waste, but there's all this indirect waste that you don't see which is produced to deliver all the other things that we have in our modern life. Even though families and individuals have been recycling and using re-usable bags at the supermarket, this goes beyond to governments, to institutions, to states, to local councils and so on.

We are aiming, on the third action item, to recover 80 per cent of the average waste that normally goes off into other streams. We're aiming to increase the use of recycled content by government and industry, not just by individuals. And we are also aiming to phase out problematic, unnecessary plastics by 2025—only 16 per cent of our plastic waste is recycled or reused. We also want to reduce organic waste that's going into landfill. The practical things we can do are composting on site in your own home or in your own back garden, having a worm farm and having stuff go into the green-recycling bin so it can be turned into compost on an industrial scale. This legislation is aimed at the bigger fish in the pond—the macro waste, not just individual household waste. We also need to have accurate data and reporting on how we're going on reducing that.

This legislation will turbocharge the process of product stewardship, which was initiated back in 2011, when we weren't in government. The ALP was on the government benches then. Product stewardship has taken root in lots of businesses, but this legislation will turbocharge that effort. Good design, where products are designed so they can be used again, is the aim of product stewardship. Taking responsibility for what you've designed is a really good initiative. Many of us remember when we used to get our milk in bottles—the milko used to drop it off at your front door step—and that bottle was used time and time and time again. Glass is very reusable. Even if it's broken it can be resmelted and reused. Everyone's familiar with the recycling of aluminium cans initiative, at least in the state of New South Wales. It was quite disruptive when it first came out, but now that it's up and running it's a really good initiative.

Some people see this ban as being just another bit of government intervention, but, really, it's long overdue. Waste shouldn't be looked at as a problem. Waste is a resource, and if you recycle intelligently, you can turn that waste resource into a commodity, something that's valuable that you can sell. If you design it well, you can use it multiple times. In fact, things can be designed to be reused and recycled. Multi-use food containers: everyone used to have glass for jams, preserves and things like that. It's just that the quick and easy bit is just putting it into another piece of paper. That leads to another problem, our paper and cardboard waste. That is recyclable, very much recyclable, if you get it into a recycling system. It can be repurposed and come back as cardboard. If you really want to get serious you can turn it back into fresh paper. All these things are ultimately recyclable. It's just that we've got to have a system so that it can happen on a macro scale. Look at tyres. Tyres are energy rich. Not only are there the plastics and carbon residue of the actual tyre bit but there are precious metals in the wire and the reinforcing, and, through the wonders of technology, all those end-of-life plastics can be used through pyrolysis and turned into road-ready diesel and petrol. There are systems that are being developed in Australia that give incredibly high returns. Up to 85 per cent of the energy can be turned into diesel, petrol, marine diesel and even avgas, and, depending on which pyrolytic process you use, you can also turn it into liquefied petroleum gases. So they are very recyclable. It is a huge resource that we should be tapping into, because otherwise we've got to drill for more oil somewhere else. It might seem like it's difficult, but if the price of oil goes up, all these recycled fuels will become very, very cost competitive. This Australian process, which is now being developed to be put into place in Thailand, in Amsterdam, in Northampton in England and potentially in the US, will deliver fuels that meet Euro 6 standards. So it is very effective.

Then there are other resources, like batteries. Everyone talks about renewable energy, but the thing with renewable energy is it has to be renewed the whole time. Solar panels only have a 20- to 25-year life. So we are going to have to have a recycling plan for them, because there is a lot of energy embedded in a solar panel. You have to be using your solar panel for four years to make up for the carbon footprint of the manufacturing of a standard solar panel. So if you then throw it on a garbage tip or bury it you're just going to have to create another carbon footprint to make another panel. So we have to start planning now to recycle all these millions and millions of solar panels that are being produced around the world.

Everyone is turning to batteries. Batteries, as we know, are not a source of energy; they are a source of storage for energy that's produced by something else. They have a huge carbon footprint too. In fact, when the Prius first came out they estimated that you had to run that Prius for 11 years to make up for all the copper, all the wiring, the second motor and the battery itself. So if you are just going use a battery in a Prius and then chuck it on a heap you will have all these toxic battery metals and elements rotting away. You could be turning it into a recycled battery. Landfill with plastic, steel and all these potentially recyclable metals like copper and rare earth metals should be an absolute no-no. Our oceans and waterways shouldn't be filling up with plastic.

If we do our bit in Australia and set an example for other nations, it will be a really good thing for the planet. We are, compared to some other nations, quite behind on how much we recycle. Rubbish can be turned into jobs. It can be turned into money. Like I said, if we are smart about the way we manage our waste, not only will it lead to a cleaner local environment and a cleaner global environment but in Australia we will have much more employment and economic activity.

The exciting thing about these waste systems is they can be done in regional areas and they can be done in metro areas. In fact, I might just say a few words about pyrolysis. Pyrolysis among some quarters of the Australian body politic is seen as an evil process because you are burning stuff. But there is actually no oxygen. You are heating stuff and you are recycling it and turning it into liquid fuels, liquefied petroleum gases or biochar, which is great for increasing soil carbon. All sorts of things come out of it. It is a wonderful technology, yet we have been very slow on the uptake. Everyone has been used to just putting things in an incinerator. But a pyrolytic plant is not an incinerator. Sure, there's heat and melting, but people have to realise, as I said, either we have to keep drilling for oil everywhere or we get sensible about using the resources we have now. It will be a lot easier to utilise all those tyres and bits of rubber and plastics that go into cars and all sorts of things.

People talk about carbon sinks. When you are changing hydrocarbon to another shape or form, that is recycling. Some of these long-lived plastics are a store of carbon. Some plastics, depending on the type, can last for hundreds of years. That is a carbon sink in itself. So that's why I think there needs to be a step-change in the way people are thinking about burning stuff. In the old days Australian councils used to have incinerators. Hospitals used to have incinerators. You just chucked everything in the back and you didn't think about it. That was incredibly wasteful, because you had all that energy. At least you should have used it to heat your water for industrial purposes or to heat your building—but, no, we just used to chuck everything in. The pyrolytic techniques are really advanced around the world, but, now that we have this legislation coming through, these sorts of things will, by their very requirement to meet the legislation, turn the economy and turn entrepreneurs to using this sort of technology in Australia, and it will be great for the economy. Some people think that, if it's plastic, you've just got to shred it up into little bits and pieces and put it in a playground as a soft landing spot or put it into a road, but I think we can be much smarter and get much better energy outcomes out of this resource rather than just having it sit inert and rotting over 30 or 50 years or whatever.

As I mentioned, this legislation turns to unprocessed plastic, glass, tyres and paper but there are so many other things that we need to turn our minds and our economy to. I mentioned batteries and solar panels, which are top of the pops because there's a lot of energy involved in making them. If you just put them into a landfill, you've wasted that energy. We should be re-using it. Rather than starting another mine somewhere, re-use all the copper, let alone all the iron waste that's sitting around the country. There must be millions of tonnes of old iron, steel and aluminium that can be recycled. We've just got to get a big enough scale to make it pay and make it work.

These bills have a lot of other technical provisions preventing and fining people and prosecuting people if they are sending off unprocessed waste. It's a great initiative. We have got a significant allocation in the budget for recycling modernisation: $190 million. We've got $20 million for the national product stewardship scheme that I mentioned, $35 million to implement our National Waste Policy Action Plan that I started talking about and also our waste data; it's going to require a whole system, and there's an appropriation of $24.6 million for that. And this is also for co-operative research centres. (Time expired)

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