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

With challenge frequently comes opportunity. I want to talk about some of the thinking and work taking place across my electorate of North Sydney as we seek to address our continued overreliance on lazy, excessive plastic packaging. Australians generate more plastic waste per person per year than the citizens of any other country in the world except Singapore, using over 70 billion pieces of soft plastic every year. The unfortunate reality is that, from production to disposal, these plastics are incredibly emissions intensive. In one year alone, Australia's emissions from plastics create more than 16 million metric tons of greenhouse gas. This is the equivalent of the emissions produced by a quarter of all cars on our roads during the same period. To respond in a way that matches the scale of this challenge, we need federal policies to drive reform around the amount, type and disposal of plastics in Australia. In the words of Plastic Free July's Pete Seeger:

If it can't be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

This must be our bottom line.

Australia has attempted to nationally coordinate a plastics policy, but we remain a long way from achieving the circularity needed. To date we've tended to focus heavily on improving recycling solutions, but recycling alone is not going to work. We must shift our focus upstream to prevent plastics from entering the market in the first place. In this context, my community is urging me to call on the minister to mandate national packaging targets and product stewardship and to shift the onus from the consumer to the creator. The environment minister has signalled her readiness to impose obligations if industry is unable to act, but my community says we are well beyond that point. Furthermore, we need greater government support for innovation readily available to get these commitments moving.

There are several startups in my electorate that are doing incredible work, but they need the government to step up and be clear on the policy, financial and economic measures it plans to take. They include Samsara Eco, who has developed a revolutionary tech that can infinitely recycle plastics and textiles. Working in this way, this tech, which has been developed in collaboration with the Australian National University, will mean that plastics will no longer need to be made from fossil fuels. By ensuring they are the feedstock for future production, the tech will keep these emissions-intensive plastics out of our landfills and our oceans. But to succeed they need our government to set a clear course of action. The time for waiting for those that create to accept responsibility has passed. The science is clear, the evidence is in our faces and the solutions could be in our hands if we're willing to invest in them.