Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a couple of brief comments about the report into the Environment Protection (Beverage Container Deposit and Recovery Scheme) Bill 2009, which the Greens introduced. The Environment, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee has looked at the issue of Australia’s waste streams in the past. This report specifically goes to the question of container deposit legislation, which has existed in South Australia for decades, and it is now time that we had a national scheme. This report looks into a very specific proposal for a national container deposit scheme, which is a national model of how we should deal with over 11 billion drink containers used by Australians every year. About three billion of those containers end up by the side of the road. Eleven billion glass, plastic, steel, aluminium, PET and HDPE bottles translate into about half a million tonnes going to landfill every single year.

The last time a Senate committee dealt with this issue they bounced the idea off to COAG, which is the place where quite a lot of good ideas go to die or at least lie around paralysed for long periods of time. Because so many COAG meetings are processes that are held behind closed doors it is very hard to know the reasons or the thinking behind why that happens. The ECA committee has expressed some impatience and has some expectation that the Environment Protection and Heritage Council will actually deliver on a container deposit scheme when it meets on 5 November in Perth.

The committee is not the only one expressing impatience and expectation on this issue. It learned in the process of the inquiry that there is in fact overwhelming support for such a scheme and that there has been for quite some time. Local councils understand the benefits. At their national meeting earlier this year, Australia’s umbrella local government organisation passed a resolution in support of the scheme, as have many individual local governments around the country. Key industry players, including Alcoa, Revive Recycling, Eco Waste and SITA Environmental Solutions, have also expressed support, so this is not an idea that is coming from the margins. Many non-government organisations, including all peak environmental organisations in the country under the umbrella of the Boomerang Alliance, are behind this scheme. Community support runs in the 80 to 90 per cent range and the mid-90 per cent range in consecutive polls. The government of South Australia strongly supports a national version of the scheme which has operated successfully there for many decades.

The reason there is so much support for the scheme, obviously, is that it makes good sense. When we recycle a drink container we reduce the amount of drink containers that we produce in this country and will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by nearly one million tonnes of CO2 per year, which is the equivalent of switching 135,000 tonnes to 100 per cent renewable energy. The scheme will save enough water to permanently supply more than 30,000 Australian homes. It will deliver air quality improvements equivalent to taking 56,000 cars off the road. It will create approximately 1,000 direct jobs and it will decrease the litter that we see by the side of roads and around our communities.

The time has clearly come for a national container deposit scheme. The benefits of the scheme that are contained in the Greens bill are that it will fund the establishment of a network of recycling centres, which are sorely needed, into which other waste streams can then be folded. Once they are established you could take e-waste, batteries or other kinds of materials that we do not want going to landfill to those centres. Another benefit, of course, is that the surplus created by the scheme can be used to support industries to reprocess and recycle materials. This point was made very strongly in the committee hearings by representatives from Alcoa.

For decades the South Australian scheme has shown the way. Now other jurisdictions around the country are impatiently waiting for some Commonwealth leadership. This report really is another missed opportunity for that leadership to be expressed. The 5 November meeting of the Environment Protection and Heritage Council will consider investigations undertaken on the community’s willingness to pay for a greater uptake of recycling. It is essential that the EPHC delivers a timetable and a costed proposal at that meeting in Perth in November.

I would like to thank all of the people who made submissions and who came to the hearings that were held. I thank other members of the committee for the really constructive way in which they approached this issue. Most particularly I thank the committee staff, who worked very diligently behind the scenes to produce a report that is quite useful. The report is another piece of evidence, if that were needed, that the time is firmly here for a national container deposit scheme.