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Clean up Australia 154.85 Kb Parliament of Victoria Legislative Council Environment Protection Amendment [Beverage Container Deposit and Recovery Scheme] Bill 2011 Submission from Clean Up Australia 7 October 2011 Contact: Terrie-Ann Johnson Chief Executive PO Box R725 Royal Exchange NSW 1225 [email protected] 02 8197 3403 Clean Up Australia – in support of a Container Deposit Scheme INTRODUCTION Clean Up Australia strongly supports the introduction of a National Container Deposit Scheme [CDS]. Appreciating waste legislation is state based, Clean Up Australia is supporting states and territories that are taking leadership positions through the introduction of their own scheme. Globally, refund schemes have proven their worth 1 and when developed in complement with kerbside recycling there is a significant change in what ends up year after year in our waterways, parks and roadsides. Packaging waste is a persistent problem in Australia. Victorians produce an estimated 10 million tones of waste each year, of which 38% goes to landfill.2 Changes in consumer behavior mean there has been a significant increase in purchasing and disposing of food and drink packaging out of the home. There is currently little effective infrastructure to recover this packaging. Clean Up Australia’s Rubbish Report 3[2010] highlights that South Australia is the only state where beverage containers are not among the five most commonly removed types of rubbish on Clean Up Australia Day. In Victoria alcoholic beverage bottles made up 5% of rubbish reported by volunteers in 2010. Bottle caps made up 4%. Within categories of major sources of rubbish, plastics are 27%, metals and aluminium equal 18% and glass is 16%. This percentage of glass is 6% higher than the national average. These findings are supported by the 2009 Keep Australia Beautiful Litter Index, which demonstrated that beverage container litter in Victoria increased from 22% of reported rubbish in 2003 to 29%.4 This represents a 5 percentage points increase from 2007 and 13 points from 2005 levels. Within this beverage container count 59% was broken glass, with 36% representing caps and lids. 5 Clean Up Australia’s polling 6 identified that a 10-cent refund is supported by 86% of surveyed Victorians. [86% agree, 8% disagree and 6% ambivalent/don’t know]. If a 10-cent CDS had been available in Victoria the rubbish removed by volunteers on Clean Up Australia Day in 2010 could have generated over $6,500. Effectiveness of existing strategies to reduce, recover or reuse waste from different waste streams 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation 2 2010 EPHC National Waste Report 3 Clean Up Australia Rubbish Report 2010 4 Keep Australia Beautiful – The Victorian Litter Report 2009 5 KAB – The Victorian Litter Report 2009: pages 24-25 6 January 2009 Poll conducted by Essential Research 2 Clean Up Australia – in support of a Container Deposit Scheme Despite government attempts to implement waste management systems including kerbside recycling, waste to landfill in Australia is still prevalent. Container Deposit schemes offer a solution to the problem because of the environmental benefits and also of the monetary incentives. Kerbside alone cannot control waste in the environment. However CDS acts as another means to deter waste going to landfill and provides consumers with a cash incentive. Current standards concerning packaging as outlined by the National Packaging Covenant 7 do not limit manufactures to certain materials. As a result manufactures will choose the cheapest material or the material which best presents the product. CDS could be used as a marketing incentive to encourage consumer uptake of a product where manufacturers chose to use CD recyclable material. Ultimately consumers will see added value through CDS which could potentially affect their purchasing choices. Reverse Vending Machines [RVMs] are widely used in Europe and the US. RVMs reduce handling costs and overall have been well received by the public. The benefit of an RVM is that it can be used for virtually all container types. The process is very simple. The consumer places the container into the machine [some have the capability to process one container per second]. Once all items have been deposited a receipt is printed. Any material which is not covered by a deposit is detected as a foreign object. The RVM sorts, crunches and/or shreds the containers, maximizing storage space and minimizing transport costs. Detailed data is also retrieved from the RVM on redeemed containers and it is possible to upgrade with new containers as they come onto the market. Environmental benefits of a CDS Reducing waste to landfill More than 630,000 tonnes per annum can be diverted through the recycling of containers. This represents a 6% reduction in municipal waste to landfill. Recycling rates in South Australia are proof that a container refund scheme works. South Australia has enjoyed a recycling rate of cans and bottles of up to 85 % while the rate in other states is less than half of this 8. It is predicted that the introduction of CDS will see an increase in recycling and recovery of beverage containers to over 81% compared to the current 41%. Diverting waste from landfill back into the resource stream has significant environmental benefits. For example, recycling one standard aluminum will save 767 grams of CO2E which is the equivalent of 1.75 standard wheelie bins 9. Recycled aluminium requires 95% less energy to re-manufacture 10 . If every household in Australia recycled just one more aluminum drink can each week over the year we would save more than 300 thousand tonnes of CO2Ee. The graph below (Figure 5.11 ) illustrates the waste life cycle. If a product is not recycled at the end of its useful life, it goes through one of three waste management options: composting, combustion, and landfilling. All three use energy for transporting and managing the waste, but they produce additional Green House Gas Emissions (GHGs) to varying degrees. 7 http://www.packagingcovenant.org.au/documents/File/National_Packaging_Covenant.pdf 8 West, D. (2008). “Financial Analysis of Cost & Benefits of a National Container Deposit System” Boomerang Alliance 9 Clean Up Australia – www.cleanup.org.au 10 Clean Up Australia – www.cleanup.org.au 11 Environmental Protection Authority US – 2007 http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/waste/lifecycle.html 3 Clean Up Australia – in support of a Container Deposit Scheme The disposal of materials indicates that they are being replaced by new products; this production often requires the use of fossil fuels to obtain raw materials and during manufacture. Industry estimates that 10 billion bottles are sold annually into Australian markets 12 . We purchase about 118,000 tonnes of plastic drink bottles a year but only recycle 35 per cent of them. The 76,700 tonnes left behind either goes to landfill or ends up in our environment as rubbish. Kerbside recycling alone is not sufficient to capture these items for recycling. The amount of bottles sold annually is enough to warrant its own waste management system. According to the 2010 National Waste Report13 Australia generated about 43,777,000 tonnes of waste 2007-07, 52%, of which was recycled. If waste generation grows at 4.5% per annum, Australia will annually generate 81,072,593 tonnes of waste by 2010-21. Container packaging materials (with the exception of liquid paperboard) do not decompose in landfills as they do not contain ‘degradable organic carbon’. Land filling of containers represents a lost opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a saving in embodied energy. Drinking Water Savings Implementation of CDS, would save 5.6 gigalitres of drinking water per annum. This is enough to supply 16,784 homes. Single use plastic water bottles are a major environmental hazard. Not only do they suck up valuable fuels in their production, they create mountains of rubbish when they are thrown away. Production of every tonne of PET 14 releases 3 tonnes of CO 2 Biodiversity It is difficult to state in quantifiable terms the damage that litter has on wildlife; however we do know that different forms of rubbish are a flora and fauna. Research by the Australian Platypus Conservancy has shown that on average 5% of all captured platypuses from1998- 12 West, D. (2008). “Financial Analysis of Cost & Benefits of a National Container Deposit System” Boomerang Alliance 13 http://www.environment.gov.au/wastepolicy/publications/national-waste-report.html 14 Pacific Institute “Bottled Water and energy/A Fact Sheet”. 4 Clean Up Australia – in support of a Container Deposit Scheme 2007 had one or more pieces of litter looped around them such as the ring from a six-pack holder 15 . Reports from Clean Up the Kimberley, genesis of the Great Northern Clean Up [project of Clean Up Australia] noted that cans were a common trap for the Spiny Tailed Goanna 16 . On World heritage listed -Lord Howe Island up to 81% of the flesh-footed shearwater chicks were found to have plastics in their digestive system.17 Social Change Achieving change in people’s attitude away from littering to more environmentally responsible behaviour is the ultimate goal of a CDS. The concern from the beverage industry that consumers will pay an increased cost as a result of the implementation of national Container Deposit system can be immediately dispelled by understanding that, ‘the actual cost that a consumer bears is not only based on their consumption, but is also dependent on how well (or badly) an individual disposes of their packaging’ 18 . What needs to be considered is the enormous social benefits which will come as a result of implementing a Container Deposit system. Such schemes place a value on what is currently considered rubbish, giving consumers an incentive to return their bottle/cans and other containers rather than let them become waste.
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