The federal government has announced it will intervene in the packaging industry after the sector failed to meet recycling targets it voluntarily set.
The move comes just days after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek face criticism over her decision to allow soft plastics to be sent overseas temporarily to deal with a stockpiling issue.
Kate Lynch, a senior executive at the Environment Department, told Senate Estimates on Tuesday that the federal government had begun working on a set of new national mandatory regulations.
“The government is pursuing regulation—so it will be mandatory new packaging regulation—that we hope to apply country-wide,” she said.
Lynch said economic modelling had begun to ascertain “the best means to achieve that highly consistent nationwide, and enforceable approach” and that each state and territory’s environment ministers were on board with the move, collectively agreeing “to reform the packaging regulation system nationwide.”
Greens Pressure Government to Sort Out Recycling Problem
The comments from Lynch come after Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, the party’s spokesperson for waste and recycling, lambasted Plibersek’s decision to backflip on exporting plastic, arguing the federal government was allowing producers to get away with not disposing of waste.“Plastic producers need to clean up their act and take responsibility for the mess they make, and governments need to enforce this through laws and binding regulations. There is nothing complicated about this, it should have been fixed years ago,” he said in a statement.
“We’ve had six years to come up with a plan to deal with our waste problem. But no government has been brave enough to deal with the elephant in the room, which is regulating plastic packaging in this country.”
Whish-Wilson said that the recycling sector had called on the federal government to institute legally binding and mandatory national packaging targets so they could have “the confidence to invest in upgrading the infrastructure necessary to process plastic and other waste.”
“The system is broken,” Whish-Wilson said. “People’s trust has been broken. The Albanese government must regulate Australia’s plastic packaging industry now.”
Government Determined to Create Domestic Recycling
Minister Plibersek has previously said that the federal government was investing around a quarter of a billion dollars in expanding and upgrading the country’s recycling facilities, part of which includes a $60 million investment as part of the Recycling Modernisation Fund (RMF).The funds will be provided over four years, from 2022-2023, and will be invested in state-of-the-art advanced recycling solutions for hard-to-recycle plastics and address low recycling rates.
However, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment, and Water has yet to announce any development on how the funds will be used.
“We’re determined to make sure we’ve got the facilities on the ground,” Plibersek said. “Right now, we’re building or upgrading 48 facilities around Australia, 11 of those have already opened, and that’s how we deal with the recycling issue in Australia.”
Plibersek said the federal government is working with state and territory leaders to make sure that Australia has a circular economy by 2030.
“We’re investing to make sure that that happens,” she said.
“And I very much say to, mums and dads, kids, who are collecting their bottles and cans for recycling, please keep doing it because facilities are being built, and we need to get better as a country at using less raw material in the first place, recycling more of what we use.”
