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

Plastic pollution in Australia's oceans and waterways was the issue of our very extensive inquiry. The report is titled Drowning in waste for a very good reason—because at the moment we have a problem with waste in Australia. We have put a ban in place, but we have a disrupted and incomplete circular economy for plastic waste in this country, and waste is building up everywhere. But the good news is that we've made some recommendations which will, hopefully, fix a lot of those problems.

First of all, I thank every one of the hundreds of submitters for the very extensive submissions that were presented to the committee as we went around Australia. There are an enormous amount of community organisations and philanthropic organisations and some standout councils and state and local government organisations that are on the job. But there's much more to do. I also thank the secretariat of the committee, who managed huge volumes of information and submissions and put them into a coherent set of data. There was so much information, so to distil it all down was quite an amazing bit of work. I thank all the other committee members, and our chair, the member for Makin, who steered us through a very useful inquiry.

What I'd like to do is not give a holistic, blow-by-blow description of this excellent report but talk about the things that I think are the most important and will lead to the most dramatic improvement in preventing plastic waste polluting our oceans and waterways. There is the microplastic issue, which is the small amounts of plastics that are ubiquitous in metropolitan life getting into our food chain, through fish and other marine animals, and there is the macro, or large, plastic waste, which is suffocating sea animals like whales, dolphins, turtles et cetera. Some of the microplastics and larger plastics are getting into seafood.

I should acknowledge all the good things that have happened because of the National Plastics Plan. I would just like to give a shout-out and a nod to my former colleague the former member for Brisbane Trevor Evans, who led that legislation when he was the minister with that responsibility in the Morrison government. He addressed a lot of the problems with the whole life cycle of marine plastic and waterway plastic and the issue of how to reduce it. Many people pointed out that there are gaps in our current National Plastics Plan. The first is to do with putting a value on the plastic. It's only waste if you waste it. You can apply that principle to lots of things. But plastic is not waste. It has embedded energy in it, and we need to start using that. I'll expand on that a bit further. A lot of the depositions related to the fact that we have plastics that are easy to recycle and plastics that are hard to recycle. They accentuated that we need to get the plastics that are essential in our lives—PET, high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene and polypropylene—because clever industrial chemists can put that to the best use. The more complex polymers are harder to recycle.

By virtue of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act—which the former member for Brisbane Trevor Evans and Scott Morrison were influential in putting in place—the Recycling Modernisation Fund and the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund have been set up and have led to major changes, some of which involve people who made depositions to this inquiry. But we still have a fragmented market. The ban is in place, so we can't export it, but there are not enough entities involved in reprocessing the built-up plastic that we are now banning from being exported. People are turning to fresh, virgin plastic in new presentations rather than utilising this market.

There were recommendations for microfibre filters on every washing machine. That was back in the original National Plastics Plan. But we haven't enacted that, so we need to do that. As I mentioned, some councils are already doing really good things with stormwater filters at that macro, local council level. But many more things can be done in that same vein, making it uniform or mandatory across the country.

There is the Ghost Nets Initiative. The big nets and bits of plastic that are left over from commercial fishing are a big problem, particularly because they suffocate whales, dolphins, turtles—all sorts of stuff. There is a ranger program to address that. A lot of the areas in the north of Australia are really quite affected by this, because a lot of these plastics don't actually come from Australia but they can end up in the northern part of Australia. One of the recommendations that would address this would be recommendation 3, which is that the government prioritise a sustainable end market for recovered plastics and increase the disposal options for plastics in remote and regional Australia, because a lot of these plastics initiatives are metropolitan based.

My particular interest out of this committee is to get recommendation 12 up. Rather than banning plastics, the best way for them not to end up as waste is to get value out of them. Many other countries have addressed this by turning waste into energy either by simple incineration or by chemical processes. The feedstock is the end-of-life plastic, and it goes through chemical processes, providing energy itself, and then, with refining, you can turn plastics that would have ended up in a waste pile, or in landfill, in a river or out at sea, back into what it started as—high-purity diesel, gas and even petroleum and kerosene. The engineering does exist for that. Many places in Europe have waste-to-energy plants in the middle of their cities, but they're in hills or dressed up with vegetation or elaborate architecture, and people don't even know that it's an energy plant using the city's waste.

So there are many things that we could do. But we really need to get going with putting a value on plastic waste for everyone in their home. We have so many clothes that are made of synthetic material. The waste can be filtered out at the place it's developed, and we can do that by setting standards for white goods manufacturers. We can encourage states at COAG meetings to institute filters on all stormwater drains, depending on the state.

I commend this report to the House. It is a very good report. It's got a huge amount of useful information. Again, I'd like to thank all the committee, all my colleagues, and all those people that are active in the industry of preventing waste from polluting our oceans. But we really need to engage with our Asian and near north neighbours to see if we can get the same rigour applied to their metropolitan and regional practices, particularly in the fishing industry, where a lot of these plastics really have a high impact on marine life. I commend Drowning in waste to the parliament.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this very important review. I first want to thank the committee, and the secretariat staff, who I know worked very hard to bring it all together. We had a number of public hearings and a significant number of submissions, and we also did a number of in-person visits around the country. It was incredibly instructive to see the submissions by so many in that process.

I would also like to thank some organisations in Warringah that are doing a fantastic job of addressing the problems of plastics and microplastics. Of course, Warringah is a place with many waterways. We have Manly Dam, we have many harbour coves and inlets and then we have beaches. So we can see firsthand the impact that plastics and microplastics have on our water environment and waterways. And, as this report identifies, we are drowning in waste.

I would like to start by thanking some organisations, like AUSMAP, who made submissions and gave evidence to the inquiry but also started one of their programs in Warringah, around East Esplanade in Manly. It's a program where they monitor how much plastic and microplastic they find in that area. It is citizen science. It is volunteer based, and they turn up on a very regular basis to monitor that plastic content. Operation Straw and Pittwater Eco Adventures are doing a phenomenal job, on a very regular basis, of cleaning up some of those harbour beaches. Unfortunately, maybe differently to surf beaches, the harbour beaches accumulate a huge amount of rubbish and plastics that have come off the boats and recreational activities in our harbour.

As this report has identified, plastic is everywhere. It's overrunning our streets, parks, beaches and coastlines. This report, appropriately titled Drowning in waste, lays out quite plainly that we need to take action. Australians consume more single-use plastic per person than any other country in the world, bar Singapore. I know a lot of Australians think that we're doing well. We think we're good global citizens and we think we're quite engaged with recycling and being plastic aware. But this statistic shows we are not doing as well as we think. I repeat: except for Singapore, we consume the most single-use plastic per person. Clearly, we have to do better.

In 2020-21 Australia used 3.79 million tonnes of plastic, of which only 14 per cent was recycled. So we are huge contributors to this problem. Around 130,000 tonnes of plastic leaks into the environment annually, including into our oceans and waterways. There are currently 150 million tonnes of plastic pollution in the ocean. By 2040 global plastic pollution is expected to double, with the ocean's plastic pollution expected to more than quadruple. By 2050 the amount of plastic waste in the environment could increase to 26 billion tonnes if no action is taken. And it gets worse. The breakdown of plastics into microplastics poses further risk to marine life, leads to blockages in digestive systems, malnutrition and death. It really is no surprise that many are so concerned. Plastic pollution is a global crisis, and it's harming our environment, our wildlife and, ultimately, us. There isn't much data yet showing the impact on human life of the ingestion of plastic, but the ingestion is happening.

Key facts, as highlighted in the report, are that we have a massive issue. There's a huge problem that we must act on because we are, quite literally, drowning in plastic. The key recommendation of this report is for the National Plastics Plan to be updated. In particular, the report notes that the plan should:

This is incredibly urgent. Our current National Plastics Plan is a disjointed one, with some goals included in the original plan already achieved prior to the plan's development. It begs the question: what is it really achieving? Stakeholders told our committee that they were lukewarm, at best, about the current plan, and so a new plan must urgently be developed in consultation with state and territory governments, industry and community and be coordinated nationally to prioritise industry accountability.

Most importantly, though, I feel strongly that what we need is for the responsibility around plastics to shift back to manufacturers. The committee found that manufacturers find it cheaper and easier to use virgin polymers rather than recycled materials in plastic products, which means we are continually making the problem worse. We are adding more and more and more plastic to the system. This use of virgin polymers for new plastics is a problem. Virgin polymers are manufactured using unrecycled and previously unused materials. It's ultimately oil. This is big oil wanting to maintain the addiction to plastic so that we continue to use their product. But technology has moved on. We know we can use much more recycled content, so that must be the direction we go in.

We had submissions to the committee from people who believe the federal government should implement a tax or levy that specifically targets virgin plastic to discourage its use and promote the use of recycled materials. Whilst the committee recommended investigating a levy on the use of virgin polymers, it fell short of recommending that it be mandatory. We've been waiting for this for a long time. We have had voluntary industry codes. I believe that time is up. We've had decades of lacklustre action from manufacturers and industry, and it's time for them to have their house in order.

The government should be implementing mandates for minimum recycled content in any imported plastics and mandating limits on the number of polymer variations—to put it in layman's terms, the number of variations to the recipes or to the types of plastics that are manufactured. Unfortunately there's a difficulty in establishing a good recycling industry. The more variations of polymers and types of plastics we have, the harder it is to establish proper recycling supply chains and circular economy aspects for all the different types. If you limit the number of them you can facilitate a much higher level of recycling, which is incredibly important.

Microplastics are the much tinier pellets and smaller pieces of plastic. They are more insidious and they get into more areas. Essentially, they are small pieces of plastic less than five millimetres long, and they are found in all parts of our environment, all over the globe. They have even made it into the polar regions and into foods such as sea salt and beer. They're everywhere. Studies around the world are showing that microplastics carry harmful chemicals and toxins, but we're still learning the full extent to which microplastics may be harmful. This is a reminder that, while technology creates progress, it can sometimes take us backwards. There was a lot of concern raised about artificial turf on sports playing fields and the plastic rubber that is used in playground equipment. For all of those uses of plastic, we do not require adequate protection for the drainage around them. Small particles leak into the environment, and that creates a huge amount of microplastic in the surrounding areas.

The recommendations in this report address a number of important issues, and I hope that the government does take note. We also saw the efforts of Indigenous communities and First Nations Australians in reducing plastics in our environment. We have a lot of expertise and, I think, a huge amount of willingness. Every school I visit in Warringah does Plastic Free Wednesday, where there's a focus by young people on limiting the use of plastic. But, clearly, we need to sheet it back home to manufacturers, who are still producing too much plastic and putting too much into the system.

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

Plastic pollution is a significant threat to the world's marine and freshwater ecosystems. This recent report by the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water highlights the size of this challenge.

All of the plastic that we have ever produced is still in existence. It will take between 500 and 1,000 years to degrade. On average, Australians use 130 kilograms of plastic per person per year. That's more single-use plastic than any other country. Only 14 per cent of plastic from Australia is recycled. As much as 130,000 tonnes of plastic leaks into our environment every single year, and the CSIRO has found that three-quarters of the waste and rubbish on Australia's coastlines is plastic.

Globally, the figures are even worse. Plastic waste makes up 80 per cent of all marine pollution. If we think about that horrible thing known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it alone is the biggest accumulation of plastic waste in the world. It includes an estimated total of 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic waste; that's 250 pieces of plastic for every human on the planet. It's inconceivable. This is a plastic rubbish heap which is 17 times the size of Tasmania.

By 2050 the plastic in our oceans will outweigh the fish. The plastic that litters our rivers and seas comes from our clothes and from packaging. It's detritus from our workplaces and homes. It's leftovers from barbecues, kids' parties and sporting events. All of it leaks because of poor waste management, stormwater run-off and illegal dumping. Its effects on marine life are disastrous; as many as 100,000 marine animals and one million seabirds are killed by plastic every year. Abandoned fishing gear and nets are particularly harmful; they entangle and kill turtles, seabirds and even dolphins. But the effects on humans are also of serious concern. We know now that microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere. They're in our drinking water. They're in our soil. They carry chemicals on their surfaces. They cross the placenta and the blood-brain barrier. We don't yet understand the health implications for us and future generations.

So far, Australia's approach to plastic waste has been fragmented and inadequate. We've had a number of national plans from this government and previous governments which have been aimed at reducing plastic waste, but all have focused more on recovery, particularly on recycling, not on reducing the production and consumption of plastics in the first place—which, logically, is where we should start. The inexorable growth in the plastics waste generated in this country in recent years has shown us these policies are not working. This committee's report calls for an updated plan with specific and measurable goals and for stronger industry accountability. It also highlights the need for a sustainable end market for recycled plastics.

We need to standardise bans on single-use plastics and waste collection standards across all Australian states and territories. We need to fund Indigenous ranger programs to support their work in cleaning up our marine debris. And we should encourage the primacy of First Nations participation in our international negotiations regarding plastics pollution. It's absolutely vital that the government works with all states and territories and the scientific experts—including particularly the CSIRO—to limit the plastic debris which enters our marine environment via stormwater.

But, of course, the very best measure, returning to the theme, is reduction of our use of plastics. Forty-nine per cent of all marine pollution that comes out of Australia results from the use of single-use plastics. All of us can act on this. We can use reusable, rather than plastic, bags. We can reduce our use of disposable plastic cups. We can buy food and cleaning products in bulk, and transport them in glass or metal containers rather than plastic ones. At a government level, a tax on plastic packaging in Australia would likely be an effective measure. We've seen similar taxes imposed in Europe, with great effect. Extended producer responsibility schemes have also shown promise overseas and have been highlighted in this report as a possible means of decreasing our plastic pollution.

Plastic pollution is a global issue, and Australia needs to play a leading role in international efforts to combat it. This report supports the development of a legally binding international treaty on plastic pollution and encourages Australia to facilitate the participation of smaller nations in those discussions. This important report, Drowning in waste, provides a clear road map for addressing the urgent and important issues of plastic pollution in Australia. By implementing its recommendations, we can reduce plastic pollution, safeguard our marine life and lead the way regionally in the global efforts to end this concerning crisis.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the recent report of the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water,Drowning in waste: plastic pollution in Australia's oceans and waterways. As the member for North Sydney, I have the great privilege of living in and representing a community with a significant amount of harbour foreshore and other waterways in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. This stunning environment is a key part of the fabric of our community, from our social connection at parks and our recreation to our mental health, our exercise, our children's sport and the wellbeing of our pets.

More broadly, water is an iconic part of Australia's cultural identity, from our world-renowned beaches and stunning small islands to our World Heritage sites such as the Great Barrier Reef, Ningaloo Reef and Katherine Gorge and the collective pride we share in our world champion swimmers, sailors, surfers and water polo players. More critically, water is, of course, essential for life.

Because of our intimate connection to water, Australians have a visceral sensitivity to the idea of drowning, so I have no doubt that my community feels the findings of this report incredibly deeply. Now we are drowning in waste. We know from the very title of the committee's report that plastic pollution poses a significant threat to Australia's biodiversity, to our human health and to our oceans and waterways due to the harm it causes to us directly and to marine and freshwater life and ecosystems. Shockingly, Australians consume more single-use plastic per person than any other country in the world except Singapore.

New research from the CSIRO estimates that every minute across the globe a garbage truck's worth of plastic enters the ocean. Up to 11 million tonnes of larger items of plastic pollution, from nets to cups and plastic bags and everything in between, is sitting on the ocean floor, clustered around continents. These enormous amounts of plastic are disproportionately affecting our incredible regional and remote coastal locations. Although inland and coastal seas cover much less surface area than do the oceans—just 11 per cent versus 56 per cent of our entire earth's area—these areas are predicted to hold as much plastic mass as does the rest of the ocean floor.

Of course, we see a lot of this plastic locally on our harbour foreshore before it gets to the ocean. Most notably, on Clean Up Australia Day, the most common type of litter reported in Australia was soft plastic, followed by single-use plastic. This has certainly been reflected in the litter my volunteers and I have collected each year on that day.

At the same time, we face the threat of microplastics and forever chemicals everywhere, including in our very drinking water. Recently, to the concern of many, including my community of North Sydney, Australian media reported that potentially unsafe levels of forever chemicals had been detected in drinking water supplies around Australia. These include human-made chemicals classed under the broader category of PFAS chemicals, the same ones United States authorities warn can cause cancer over a long period of time, with reports warning there is no safe level of exposure.

Microplastics have now been found in all environments, including the polar regions, from Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and in foods such as sea salt and beer, and by next year it's predicted that 99 per cent of seabirds will have ingested some form of plastic. Barely a month goes by without an alarming new headline on the prevalence of microplastics. Just this year we've already had 'Microplastics found in every human testicle in study: Scientists say discovery may be linked to decade-long decline in sperm counts in men around the world' and 'Microplastics found in every human placenta tested in study: Scientists express concern over health impacts, with another study finding particles in arteries'.

It's no surprise that each aspect of this toxic onslaught is a matter of profound concern across the communities and different generations of North Sydney. Most recently, I received the following email in response to an article about the carcinogens in our water supply. The author wrote:

How can we get some answers on the most disappointing and distressing article? I've also heard roundup chemicals are showing up in human breast milk. What can be done about this?

At the same time, I've heard from many constituents keen to do the right thing, who struggle, in the face of the collapse of REDcycle, with the enormous amount of plastic they accumulate domestically and the lack of convenient opportunities to environmentally dispose of things such as blister packs. I've had constituents who have written to me about the threat of microplastics and landfill remaining present for generations and their increasing presence in marine and food supply structures, and about the prevalence of forever chemicals already banned in the EU in the durable water-resistant coating used on Australian jackets. That constituent wrote:

This coating is known as C6 (perfluorohexane sulfonic acid)—it's supposed to be a nicer version of the more toxic C8, but appears to exhibit many of the same significant issues in terms of human health and damage to the environment

… due to our lax regulations we risk (and already are) becoming a bit of a dumping ground for companies to get rid of their stocks of these chemicals—until we catch up with meaningful restrictions—which is really disappointing.

Everyone who has reached out to me about this wants, more than anything, action. Overwhelmingly, the message from my community is threefold: (1) we're aware we're drowning in waste, (2) it's intolerable and (3) we urgently need our government to act. The stakes are too high not to act. This beautiful environment, so rich in diversity, and the health of our next generations are not ours to gamble with.

The first, crucial step has been taken: the vital work of the committee in holding hearings and inviting submissions and distilling the evidence into this sobering report with its 22 key recommendations. I really want to thank the committee for their work and for these recommendations, which represent a practical way for our government to channel the community's urging of action into effect.

Importantly, the committee's recommendations include the implementation of a national plan, with an annual report to parliament on the progress of key actions from that plan, and for the government to prioritise a sustainable end market for recovered plastics as a matter of urgency.

The seventh recommendation is for the government, as a priority, to take a leadership role in coordinating and tracking actions in relation to the reduction of the use of plastics, in the face of our woeful ranking as second in the world for the use of single-use plastics.

Other recommendations include making it easier for consumers to recycle more effectively through effective labelling; developing and funding public awareness and education on proper recycling practices; and commissioning research to determine the impacts of microplastic ingestion, inhalation and skin contact on human health, and making it publicly available. All are concrete actions which respond to the pressing concerns I hear from my community in this area.

I urge the government to implement all of the committee's recommendations without delay—in particular, the first recommendation, that being to develop, through the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and in consultation with the states and territories, industry and the community, an updated National Plastics Plan—not in a future term of government but now, in this term, in the final year of the 47th Parliament. Please do not let this report sit on a shelf gathering a film of microplastics. I urge you: throw a drowning nation a rope and act now.

Debate adjourned.