Page 6094 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 2010
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MR COE: Minister, the strategy 1.3 states:
The ACT Government will also encourage businesses to provide customers with choices that allow purchases with less packaging, for example allowing people to bring their cup for take away coffee and purchasing fruit without packaging.
Minister, what restrictions are there for businesses to do this at the moment? And of the 570 kilograms which will go to landfill each year what proportion will be fruit packaging or coffee cups?
Mr Hargreaves: Will you table that Blackberry?
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves!
MR CORBELL: In relation to the volumes of waste, I will have to take that question on notice.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR CORBELL: I note that the Liberal Party are making light of this. But I would say in response that what Mr Coe has chosen to do in his critique of the waste policy is to identify one element that is about reducing the amount of waste that is generated and is claiming that that is the entire waste strategy. And he is absolutely wrong. What is quite clear is that he has not read the waste strategy because if he had read the draft waste strategy he would know that this strategy focuses on waste reduction at source but is also about waste recovery. These are two essential components of the strategy amongst four key elements of the strategy.
It is a very legitimate policy setting to suggest that we need to better educate businesses about how they can reduce the amount of waste that is generated at source, and that is one example of how that can be achieved. We see Mr Seselja waltzing in here every morning with his cup of coffee. Perhaps if he had a reusable cup he would not be generating so much waste. It is an example. The whole point is that it is an example of where you can reduce waste to landfill.
This strategy deals with waste generation and this strategy also deals with waste recovery and this strategy has outlined how over more than 98,000 tonnes of waste currently going to landfill can be reduced and eliminated from going to landfill, and that is what this draft strategy is all about.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Hunter, a supplementary question?
MS HUNTER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, why does the strategy not give any attention to slow composting of organic waste, given that this produces the highest value organic matter which will capture the most carbon and other nutrients back into agricultural soil?
MR CORBELL: I draw Ms Hunter’s attention to the range of technologies that have been identified in the strategy for using organic waste. One of those is anaerobic
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