Page 642 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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There is, however, that last 25 per cent. As with most positive issues, initiatives or projects such as this—no waste—it is always the easier picked fruit that is picked first. The more difficult issues sometimes are just in relation to the technology that is available and the capacity to recycle some substances, such as the fairly blatant but easy example of asbestos. Over the last 10 years we have taken enormous tonnages of asbestos to landfill, and substances such as asbestos contribute to the amount of waste going to landfill. There is no technology known in the world, I am advised, to render asbestos safe. There is apparently no jurisdiction in the world that recycles asbestos or has the capacity to recycle asbestos. There are a number of other substances of such toxicity in regard to which in the first place there is no appetite to seek to recycle and there is no known technology to recycle some substances and some materials.
When we get to the point of a no waste environment, we cannot claim to have achieved that until we deal with substances such as asbestos. In the context of remarks that I have made recently, and for which I have been erroneously and egregiously misrepresented and misquoted, I had in mind issues such as that. We will be taking waste to landfill for quite a while yet, having regard to technology, capacity and the market. There is no market in the world for recycled asbestos. There is no technology, there is no market, there is no capacity—just by way of a simple and, of course, stark example of some of the issues we face.
I might go back to the answer I gave to both Ms Hunter and Ms Le Couteur. I am advised that the next immediate initiative we might best pursue is that of achieving separate streams for recycling at the tip face. I am advised, however, that to achieve a 10 per cent reduction in waste being sent to landfill through that particular initiative, at a cost of $4.7 million a year, we would at best achieve a two per cent increase in the overall level of waste that we are recycling. So there would be a cost of $4.7 million for a two per cent increase. What I am advised is the next easiest measure—in other words, perhaps easiest in a physical sense and also easiest perhaps in not being the most expensive—will cost $4.7 million. I am advised that it will cost at least $4.7 million to go from 74 per cent to 76 per cent. These are at the heart, Ms Bresnan, of some of the issues which together we need to discuss.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Bresnan, a supplementary question?
MS BRESNAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can the minister explain how the government has used the experiences from trials and programs conducted in other jurisdictions on organic waste recycling?
MR STANHOPE: I am aware of the earlier trial. I will have to take some advice on that, Ms Bresnan, but I will take that advice and I will be more than happy to share it with you for the sake of a continuing discussion around the hierarchy and the prioritising of additional waste initiatives which the government is determined to take.
There is a budget implication, as I have just sought to explain. In the decisions we make there is an attitude that the government adopts to these things. There are some initiatives that one might pursue that one imagines will have broad public appeal but which will not produce at the end of the day the same reduction in waste to landfill or the same level or increase in recycling as other initiatives.
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