Page 2320 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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There is little point in going to the effort and expense of collecting material for recycling that simply ends up in landfill due to high contamination rates. I am advised that property maintenance companies around Canberra already recycle commercial quantities of fluorescent lights removed from commercial and office buildings. After the Commonwealth’s recent decision to phase out incandescent light bulbs, which will result in the transition to fluorescent bulbs, my department has commenced investigating the possibility of having fluorescent bulb recycling drop-off services at the Mugga Lane and Mitchell resource management centres.
Just flicking back for a second, while I am talking about companies recycling, I need to congratulate REECO as it recycles about 95 per cent of the packaging and everything else. We already have good recycling services for mobile phone rechargeable batteries and car batteries in the ACT. However, at this point in time, it is not viable to implement a recycling program for alkaline batteries, that is, the common household battery, as no reprocessing facilities are currently available.
Advice from the Environmental Protection Agency is that alkaline batteries pose no risk of environmental harm by being disposed of to landfill. I will repeat that for the benefit of Mr Pratt as we had a discussion about this earlier. The EPA says that alkaline batteries pose no risk of environmental harm by being disposed of to landfill. When alkaline battery processing facilities become available I am sure this initiative will be pursued.
As I outlined earlier, the ACT already recycles over 208,000 tonnes of garden waste a year. Green waste is accepted free of charge at the government's Mugga Lane and Macgregor facilities. In relation to mandating recycling practices within the business sector through legislative mechanisms which are difficult to enforce, we have instead chosen to work with the business and waste management sectors to bring about a change in practices.
We have progressively introduced pricing mechanisms that send a clear message: If you want to dispose of waste to landfill it will cost significantly more than taking up cheaper recycling alternatives that are readily available. Businesses can actually save money by recycling; a great incentive to encourage recycling in the business sector. The current gap between landfill charges and recycling charges is around $40 per tonne.
My department is in the advanced stages of discussions with a private sector resource recovery operator who is looking to establish commercial food waste collection and processing operations in the Hume resource recovery estate. However, for commercial in-confidence reasons I cannot provide specific details on this initiative at this point in time. I acknowledge the interest of Mrs Dunne in this initiative. When those commercial in-confidence issues have been taken care of I will be back to inform Mr Pratt, Mrs Dunne and Dr Foskey.
Under the new resource recovery contract at Mugga Lane and the current Mitchell Resource Management Centre contract, resource recovery from mixed waste is already taking place. One of the investments in the Mugga Lane resource management contract is for a mixed waste processing plant to be constructed and operated that will
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