SUBJECTS: High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution; soft plastics recycling; recycling infrastructure.
SABRA LANE, HOST: Australia is joining a coalition of nations aiming at ending plastic pollution around the world by 2040. It follows last week's shock decision by REDcycle to stop collecting and processing soft plastics at supermarkets for recycling. It had been stockpiling tonnes of waste in warehouses because it couldn't process any of it. The Federal Environment Minister is Tanya Plibersek. Minister, good morning, and welcome to AM.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Good morning.
LANE: It's forecast that plastic consumption and pollution will treble by 2060. Australia is signing up to this coalition. It wants a legally binding agreement in place by the end of 2024. What will that require here?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it requires us to do what Australia wants to do already, which is increase our ambition on recycling plastics, avoiding plastic use in the first place, wherever we can, and then recycling or composting the plastics that we do use.
We know that Australians are very keen to get better at plastic recycling. If you ask Australians, 80 per cent say that it's important to build a circular economy here in Australia. Three quarters look for the recycling symbol when they're buying goods in the supermarket. So, Australians want to recycle. The government is prepared to invest. We've got at a Commonwealth level, about a quarter of a billion dollars going into recycling infrastructure, including $60 million in particular to soft plastic and hard to recycle plastics infrastructure. States and territories are doing their bit. The private sector is keen to get involved.
What we haven't really had in recent years is the infrastructure investment and the preparedness to regulate. So last week, I announced some areas where I was prepared to regulate to make sure that we were meeting our targets.
LANE: How long does the industry have to get its act together before you do that?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we said at the most recent environment ministers meeting that we will reform regulation of plastics by 2025 to make sure that all plastic that's used in Australia is designed to be recovered, reused, recycled and reprocessed.
LANE: There is a target right now of 70 per cent of plastic packaging being recycled or composted by 2025. The latest figures indicate that we're nowhere near that. Something like 16 per cent.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes, and we've been stuck at 16 per cent for four years. And so, it does show that we need to make this infrastructure investment. And as I say, we've got from the Commonwealth’s own spending, we've got a quarter of a billion dollars set to be invested in infrastructure, but it also requires regulation in some cases. So, for example, solar panels have been on a warning that if the industry doesn't improve its recycling, that I'm going to regulate. And I've said that I will now, because we've seen for years, this product drift on, where 83 per cent of the contents of solar panels aren't recycled, and we've got about a quarter of a million tonnes of waste going into landfill. That's unsustainable. I mean, it's not just the products that should be recaptured from those solar panels. It's also the potential for toxic materials to leach into the soil and potentially into water.
LANE: How soon will you have regulations for solar panels? And in the end, won't that just mean consumers end up paying for that price?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, once we get the circular economy running right. In fact, what you're doing is capturing really valuable materials and reusing them. So, of course, there's a cost of initial investment. And as I said, the government is prepared to invest in that, upgrading the recycling infrastructure. But even the plastic waste, the soft plastic waste that we're so concerned about with REDcycle collapsing last week, that is a valuable commodity once we get efficient at processing it and reusing it in new products. The same goes for solar panels.
LANE: What more should the supermarket giants, Coles and Woolworths be doing to encourage manufacturers and producers to use recycled materials in the first place? Or even encourage better environmentally friendly packaging?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, well it’s absolutely vital that Coles and Woolies come together to fix this. They need to be able to sit at the same table to do that. I know they’re applying to the ACCC for an exemption so they can work on this together. The ACCC is always a bit nervous when Coles and Woolies, with their market share get together. I’m hopeful they’ll get an exemption to sit down and talk this through.
I think as huge powers in this market, the big supermarket giants absolutely have the ability to say we want to see less problematic plastic, and we want to see less plastic used overall. And the plastic that is reused we know it can be made into really valuable commodities including, I think Coles gets its supermarket trollies made out of recycled plastic. It is, at least in part creating a demand for recycled plastic products. We’re looking at having mandatory shares of new plastic made from recycled plastic materials. That’s another thing that we can do across the industry to see better recycling targets met.
LANE: Tanya Plibersek. Thanks for your time on AM.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thanks, Sabra.
