Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some remarks about the Environment Protection (Beverage Container Deposit and Recovery Scheme) Bill 2010, which is a bill proposed by my colleague Senator Ludlam. It proposes a solution to the disposal of the 12 billion beverage containers that Australians use each year. It seeks to practically address the fact that only about half of those beverage containers are recycled and that most of the remainder wind up as either litter or landfill.

Clearly we have a serious problem with landfill and waste in Australia, and drink containers are just one aspect of it. Four billion plastic bags are given out at supermarkets, and barely any of them are recycled. As a Queenslander, I know that many of them end up in our precious marine areas and that lovely little critters such as turtles think that the plastic bags are food and end up dying of starvation because the plastic impedes their digestive tract. So land-source marine debris is another huge problem which we need to deal with.

Four million tonnes of packaging are used and discarded every year. One of my pet hates is when I open a packet of something which has about 10 other packets inside, each wrapped individually in plastic. I think it is a disgusting waste. Australians accumulate 18 million used tyres every year. Four million of them are sent to landfill despite the fact that each tyre contains many recyclable quantities—1½ kilos of steel, half a kilogram of textile and seven kilos of rubber can be reused. But the tyres are not dealt with responsibly; instead, about 60 per cent of them—that is, 11 million of them—are exported to Vietnam and China, where they are recycled, if you can call it that, under appalling labour conditions and with very harmful environmental and public health impacts.

Mobile phones are another nightmare, for more reasons than just wastage. There are 24 million mobile phones in circulation in Australia, and, as of June 2010, about 70 per cent of Australians have one. A lot of them get replaced, obviously, and the turnover time ranges from 18 months to two years. There are about 16 million old handsets in cupboards and drawers in Australian homes, and I confess that I am guilty of having one of them myself. Each of these old handsets contains substances that we could contemplate reusing.