Page 1623 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
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The ACT government is also making sure that we get the green bin service right by conducting a phased rollout. The government and contractors will learn from the evaluation and outcomes of the pilot program for the future rollout to other regions across Canberra. Of course, we will also learn through the findings of the ACT waste feasibility study.
Following the success of the pilot, the rollout plan is proposed to go to Tuggeranong and then Belconnen. It is expected that all of Canberra will benefit from the scheme by 2020. It is important that this government take a stand to look after our environment, and I am pleased that so many people on the south side are voting in favour of our policy every week by wheeling out their green bins.
It is unfortunate that the Liberals did not share this view at the election. After years of rhetoric trivialising the ACT government’s role in education and health and wanting to have a greater focus on our role as a shire council, they failed to even implement their own rhetoric on municipal service provision. After taking a green bins policy to the 2012 election, the Canberra Liberals binned the proposal. They decided that they had no plans to wheel out either a green bins scheme or a bulky waste collection service. Mr Coe has failed to roll out his forum on the issue of green waste, which he promised to do in June last year.
In this new term of the Assembly his colleague Mr Wall blew his lid, attacking our green waste program in preference for a fee-for-service, ad hoc, for-profit private provider provision. Only our government is serious about green bins and waste management services because we take a responsible approach to managing our environment.
We will continue to work towards our goal of zero recoverable waste sent to landfill. While the implementation of green bins will make a significant contribution to reducing our recoverable waste, we also need to have a view to future policy improvements that can be made, particularly looking at the disposal of other forms of waste, including other forms of organic waste, like food waste.
Just last week I was in Adelaide, in the City of Prospect, where they have implemented a three-bin policy similar to ours, including a green bin. Residents there are provided with a kitchen organics basket, which is used to collect food scraps and similar material, including tissues, tea bags and even hair. These are placed into the larger green bin for collection. The increased cost and separate transportation of food waste has previously been a barrier to household food waste in the ACT, but the rollout of a third green bin to ACT households does provide an opportunity to consider the coupled approach taken in other jurisdictions like the City of Prospect.
It is estimated that the organic waste collection systems in other jurisdictions have recovered between 18 and 51 per cent of food waste in the residual bins. Of course, strategies to collect organic waste should not displace strategies to encourage composting of organic food waste, but it may be a complementary policy as we move towards our zero waste target.
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