Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm so pleased to see so many members of the press gallery and the photographers here to hear me tell the House about the amazing grade 5 and grade 6 students at Karingal Heights Primary School, who it has to be said are leading the way in looking after the environment and supporting local manufacturing. Last year they did a recycling project, working with Sebel, a furniture company, and Martogg, which is a plastics manufacturing and recycling company based in Dandenong, just to the north of my electorate of Dunkley. They worked with Martogg to learn about the circular economy and why it's so important to be able to turn waste products into useful products.

They completed projects showing how much they had taken in from the lectures and what their understanding was. They then collected plastic from home—the wrappers of their lunch, ice cream tubs, anything they could get their hands on—and took it into school. The plastics were picked up by Martogg, taken to their plant and turned into plastic granules. Those granules were then transported to Sebel and moulded into school chairs. Not long ago, I had the pleasure of being there at Karingal Heights with the students when they got their chairs. They now sit in their classroom on chairs that are made from plastic that they collected from waste.

The students at Karingal Heights in my community are ahead of the curve, and an Albanese Labor government is going to do all it can to make sure that it supports those sorts of great initiatives.

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