Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion of the member for Fremantle regarding the need for us to take immediate and effective action to improve the handling of soft plastics in this country. We produce a lot of plastic waste. Unfortunately, we live at a time when using virgin plastic is still cheaper than recycling the plastic that's already in circulation. In 2019-2020 only 16 per cent of our plastic packaging was recycled or composted in Australia. We have a national packaging target of recycling or composting 70 per cent of plastic packaging by 2025, but it's hard to see how we could possibly achieve that. Our waste collection and resource recovery industry is very fragmented. Legislative requirements vary from state to territory.

In Victoria we've had multiple extremely unfortunate incidents recently in which tens of thousands of tonnes of recyclables have ended up in landfill and then have often been incinerated in industrial fires. At a national level there are far too few financial incentives for manufacturers to use recycled materials and we lack the technology and the infrastructure necessary to turn large volumes of plastic into other useful things. We have been far too slow in creating a circular economy. More recently, we were told that more than 12,400 tonnes of plastics were found in warehouses in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, much of which had already degraded to the extent that it was not suitable for reprocessing and will have to end up in landfill. While the government allotted $60 million in the October 2022 budget for advanced solutions for hard-to-recycle plastics as part of the $250 million Recycling Modernisation Fund, at this point we have no local facilities available to deal with soft plastic at this scale.

Many constituents from Kooyong have contacted me to express their distress about the recent collapse of REDcycle's soft plastics recovery program. Emily from Hawthorn East told me that her 'conscientious household' was saddened by the failure of the REDcycle initiative. Miriam from Surry Hills believes that the undermining of 'community trust' is one of the biggest issues in this matter. John from Camberwell noted that the various government levels had thrown this issue around like a hot potato. Janet asked why we can't just ban plastic bags from supermarkets. Meg from Hawthorn East said: 'This feels a little like the straw that's going to break my back.'

It is important to acknowledge that, as tragic as it was, the collapse of the REDcycle program was only a small part of a massive problem. Before its collapse, REDcycle was collecting less than one per cent of the 449,000 tonnes of soft plastic used by Australians every year. We have to use less plastic. We also need the ability to recycle mixed polymer soft plastics domestically. We need to be confident that, when we put plastic in a recycling bin or when we deliver it to a collection centre, it will be repurposed effectively, not dumped in landfill or sent overseas. This government has committed to addressing the woeful state of plastic recycling through combined efforts by state and territory environment ministers to reform the regulation of plastic packing by 2025 and migration of the softs plastics workforce. Last year Australia signed on to the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution. In the last week the Albanese government has indicated that it will grant exemptions to allow Coles, Woolworths and Aldi to send our soft plastics offshore.

None of this is enough. To end plastic pollution on our land and in our seas we have to decrease our consumption and our production of plastics to sustainable levels. We have to make recycling targets mandatory. We need a national kerbside collection of soft plastic, as has been proposed by the Victorian government, that is mandatory. We have to enable a circular economy for plastics in which plastic products are either recycled, reused or remanufactured. A mature country takes responsibility for all of its actions with ambition and with integrity. That's what we need to do.

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