2023-05-18
The Greens again call on the Albanese Government to hold the big polluters to account and regulate Australia’s plastic packaging industry.
The call comes after a sensational plastic waste export ban backflip by the Government which exposes just how broken the nation’s waste and recycling systems have become.
Quotes attributable to Greens spokesperson for waste and recycling, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson:
"An export ban on sending plastics overseas for recycling should have signaled a welcome boost for Australia’s recycling industry - particularly for procurement processes - but successive governments have failed to take simple but critical steps to make us self-sufficient waste and recycling managers.
"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.
"The recycling sector has consistently called for legally binding and mandatory national packaging targets in order to have the confidence to invest in upgrading the infrastructure necessary to process plastic and other waste.
"In 2020 Labor voted in support of a Greens amendment to the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 that would have seen Australia’s National Packaging Targets mandated in law. Sadly the amendment failed by one vote, with multinational packaging corporations winning the day by convincing the Coalition and One Nation to vote in favour of big business.
"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.
"The system is broken. People’s trust has been broken. The Albanese Government must regulate Australia’s plastic packaging industry now."