Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are few better examples of waste management and waste reduction than what's occurring in restaurants and cafes in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Leura and its amazing cafes, which I urge everyone in this place to visit, are combining to become the first village in Australia to eliminate restaurant food waste going to landfill. Take the award-winning Leura Garage as an example. The owner, James Howarth, has taken great care to reduce the restaurant's carbon footprint and now composts all the business's organic waste using closed loop organics. Microbial technology reduces waste volumes by up to 90 per cent in 24 hours and that means lower disposal costs and it also creates a nutrient-rich reusable product. The compost then heads to the Big Fix in Blackheath where it is combined with soil and used to grow produce. This is a business that takes its waste seriously but it is just one example of how residents living in the Blue Mountains World Heritage area are trying to reduce waste and shrink their carbon footprint.

The most up-to-date data available shows mountains residents diverted 55 per cent of household waste from landfill. This was particularly impressive given that the figure just five years earlier was 19 per cent. A key environmental challenge for places like the Blue Mountains and neighbouring Hawkesbury, which make up Macquarie, my electorate, is to reduce waste generation rates so that we improve the health and lifespan of the limited landfill. Bushfires and other natural disasters pose a real risk to the life of the landfill because they generate huge amounts of waste, with the potential to fill landfill years faster than projected under the business-as-usual generation rates—yet another cost you add up if you do nothing to reduce the impacts of climate change.

Hawkesbury residents are also following this lead, diverting about 30 per cent of waste from landfill. The message has reached our schools and a great example was Windsor High School, which last year won a Hawkesbury City Council award for its environmental program, which focused on rubbish reduction, recycling and created the Cash Cage project which is used to separate different recyclable items. The student community decided that money earned from the return-and-earn program would be used to buy compost bins, so they are doing even more to reduce waste and improve the soil quality on the school grounds and in its agricultural plot.

Recently, Hawkesbury Remakery was opened, a not-for-profit organisation working as a self-sustaining social enterprise business. The Remakery in historic Windsor Mall features a wide variety of makers and their products from crocheters and sewers to upcyclers and traditional artists. Boomerang Bags will be set up permanently in the co-making space, creating reusable bags from old fabric to replace plastic bags. And they'll make possum socks to be used by WIRES volunteers for native wildlife. It's all done from things that have been recycled and reused. You can get sewing repairs done, you can be creative and you can turn someone's castoffs and rubbish into your own work of art.

I think we've all seen in our own electorates that people are really embracing a huge range of recycling and are reusing things in order to reduce waste at a local level. We have men's sheds and we have the tool libraries, like Toolo in Katoomba. We have worm farms, the scraps going to the chooks and the composting that happens in backyards right around my region. But we have to remember that even after diverting more than half of their waste, households in one half of my electorate still sent 7,806 tonnes to landfill in a six-month period. That's heavier than the wrought iron used in the Eiffel Tower. That's a lot of waste! That's why funding for initiatives to help reduce waste and to recycle more is always welcome, and research by the CRCs into how we do that better is crucial. Technology can help us, and I'm pleased to hear those opposite saying that they do need to listen to the science on this.

We also need to help our neighbours so we can clean up the Pacific, which is littered with plastic waste. Australia's coasts and marine species are already profoundly affected by the scourge of microplastic and plastic not breaking down, ending up in turtles' stomachs. My colleague the shadow minister for the environment and water pointed out late last year that the bulk of the coalition's $167 million so-called Australian Recycling Investment Fund is actually $100 million rebadged from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, so let's be transparent about this. As a nation, we recycle less than 12 per cent of our plastic waste. We need to be really genuine about our commitment to reducing it. (Time expired)

Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.