Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 at this time because it's also National Recycling Week. The theme of National Recycling Week this year is 'Recovery: A Future Beyond the Bin'. The Planet Ark website states:

We invite you to value your resources, giving them a second life by reducing virgin resource use, reusing and recycling.

How timely that is given the nature of the bill that we are speaking about here today.

I've just listened to the member for Dunkley's contribution and I want to pick up on some of her closing remarks about the future of our kids and the stuff they're doing. What really impresses me is the fact that our kids and our young people are taking seriously the responsibility for our looking after our environment. What's even better is that they are taking that opportunity themselves, without government interference mandating what they should or shouldn't do. The true value of our democracy is that society makes decisions along the way, not that governments impose those decisions and choices that people make. On this side of the parliament, we fundamentally believe that Australians have a free choice about the things they do or don't do.

The importance of this legislation is that it's about us taking responsibility for the waste that we generate in this country. As I said this morning with Assistant Minister Evans in a video on National Recycling Week, it gives us the opportunity to reuse again and again the raw materials involved in our manufacturing processes. In the long term, that can only be good for us as a country. Nearly 650,000 tonnes of waste was exported overseas in 2018-19, or some 40,000 shipping or containers. They would span from Sydney to Canberra if laid end to end.

Through this legislation, the Morrison government is introducing the important notion of responsibility for our waste. It's the first time ever that a Commonwealth government has shown true commitment to taking this important environmental and economic policy reform. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill will provide a national framework to manage waste and recycling across Australia now and into the future. It implements an export ban on waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres, and was agreed to by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments in March this year. The waste export ban is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our waste management and recycling sector to collect, recycle, reuse and convert waste into a resource. This reform is expected to see the Australian economy turn over an additional $3.6 billion and potentially generate $1.5 billion in economic activity over the next 20 years. Importantly, this is ultimately about jobs. These new industries and new opportunities that will be created have the potential to create jobs—as I said when I was with the assistant minister this morning, jobs in the city of Logan and the northern Gold Coast. In many regards, those things are already occurring.

I note that the member for Dunkley, in her speech, referred to kids in school. Well, I want to mention two great programs that are been funded by the Commonwealth government through the Community Environment Program grants process. Beenleigh State High School received $18,500 to implement recommendations to improve waste management systems and Marsden State High School received nearly $7,000 for a waste compounding and recycling centre, where they can sort their general waste in order to reduce their carbon footprint. They discovered through this process that they have reduced their landfill by over 85 per cent, and they've also introduced a container deposit scheme.

Importantly, local businesses in my electorate of Forde are already highly involved in the resource recovery and waste recycling process. Gold Coast Resource Recovery has established a dedicated agency and service network to provide recycling solutions for used lead-acid batteries and used non-lead batteries in such a way that it ensures long-term environmental sustainability. V Resource is another local company based in Loganholme who are also researching and harnessing the latest technology to advance battery recycling. They say their goal is to protect the environment and produce cleaner, higher quality lead goods through recycling lead-acid batteries by using particular pre-treatment processes. In addition, there is Molectra. One of the items that we've got on that list for non-export is tyres. Molectra are dedicated to reprocessing tyres into a range of products. The are used in road surfaces. They create rubber car-stops for car parks and a range of other products from these recycled tyres. He's built this business from the ground up over many years. It continues to grow and is now moving to bigger premises as a result of the expansion of the business over the past few years. These are just a couple of the businesses in my electorate of Forde that are doing terrific work in the recycling space.

I'd also like to mention Recycling Developments. They take over 90 per cent of in-coming waste to be transferred into useful, cost-effective environmental products such as soil, mulch, aggregate and recycled timber products. Also, the federal government, through I think the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, invested $6 million in a trial with Logan City Council to take sewerage waste solids at the Loganholme sewerage waste treatment plant to be converted into biochar. These are just another couple of examples of what is being done in conjunction with the private sector with the assistance of government funding. I note the member for Dunkley referred to plastics. That is, indeed, a huge problem—the issue of plastics getting into our waterways and oceans. But I note with interest something I read recently. Redland City Council, which our good colleague the member for Bowman represents, have built a one-kilometre stretch of road on Princess Street at Cleveland infused with recycled plastic called Green Roads PolyPave.

So we can see from those examples, and a number of others that I will refer to, that there are an enormous number of initiatives going on right across the country, separate from this legislation that we have introduced and are debating today, for people already looking for opportunities to recycle and reuse the waste we create. The member for New England in his contribution earlier remarked on the importance of water. At Teys abattoirs in my electorate, they have put in a new treatment plant which has reduced their carbon footprint. As a consequence of doing that, the methane gas emitted in the treatment process is now captured and used to generate heat for their boilers, cutting the facility's natural gas consumption by over 30 per cent. Also part of that was a major water recycling initiative at the Beenleigh plant, through its utilities reduction program. As a result of that, the abattoir has been able to reduce its daily water consumption at the Beenleigh site by some 30 per cent. These are good, practical, on-the-ground measures that are ensuring our valuable resources are well used, not overused. That's important, especially considering that we've come out of a drought in Queensland in the last little while. Water security and the use of water have been critically important in that.

Another business that I've had the pleasure of meeting with recently is BlockTexx. BlockTexx recycle textiles. Until I met with them, I wasn't aware that textiles are one of the major contributors to our landfill problem. Blocktexx are looking to unlock the value of discarded textiles by recycling and reprocessing them. That way, they can be reused to make new garments. That is another tremendous example of an area that we probably don't talk about. It is not on the list we refer to. But still these products are filling up our landfill sites. The member for Moreton, on the other side of the chamber, well knows—not that it's in his patch, but it's not too far from both of our parts of the world—the enormous issues they're having in and around Ipswich with landfills taking rubbish and waste from South-East Queensland and also interstate. So these are pressing issues that need to be dealt with for the future health of our communities.

One product that is not often talked about but a product I have followed with a bit of interest over the last little while is solar panels. In a report several years ago, the Japanese government noted their growing concern about how the millions of solar panels that are being used around the world—specifically those in Japan—are going to be recycled, given the volume of toxic materials in those solar panels. I'm very pleased to say that the LNP Queensland opposition have recently announced that, if they are elected to government on the weekend, they will open a solar panel recycling facility in South-East Queensland, to work with councils to build new roads from recycled plastic as part of a plan to create new jobs and protect our environment. That is a tremendous initiative, especially when you think that solar panels have a life of 20-odd years and many are now coming to the end of their useful life. Given the number of solar panels we have in our roofs, particularly in Queensland but also in other states, how those solar panels are possibly going to be recycled is a real issue of concern. We certainly don't want them going into landfill, given the toxic materials that they create.

Earlier I reflected on a program by Redland City Council. A number of years ago Gold Coast city council paved a trial patch of road with recycled rubber in the road surface to see how that worked. I'm aware of a number of governments overseas that are using recycled plastics and rubber for conduits to run electrical cables and other things under footpaths so they're easily accessible. There are a range of these initiatives, and I'm very pleased to see that the LNP state government has committed to making Queensland the recycling state, whether it's building green roads from recycled plastic, establishing the solar panel recycling industry or banning batteries and e-waste from landfill. With Minister Evans, I recently had the pleasure of meeting, in Yatala in my electorate, with TES, who take computers and old phones, break them down and recycle them. There is support for a recycling research and development centre and the fast-tracking of approvals for recycling infrastructure. All of these initiatives, whether they be at a school, community or private sector level and whether they are proposals by the LNP state opposition or the work that this government is doing through these bills, show that the Morrison government and this side of the House are committed to ensuring the long-term future and sustainability of our environment for the generations to come. I commend this bill in its original form to the House.

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