Page 4721 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 31 October 2017
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motivated to collect can after can perhaps over a number of weeks, store them then take them in a bundle to a deposit collection bin to receive their 10c is unrealistically optimistic.
For those Canberrans who will not be doing this—which I would say will be the vast majority—the containers they throw into the appropriate recycling bin, provided they carry the deposit scheme logo, will be disposed of through kerbside collections and will be filtered out at Mugga Lane. The refunds they would have received will be divided between the materials recovery facility and the ACT government. So effectively another process, admittedly automated, will be added to the current process.
Will the scheme cause people to rethink how they dispose of their containers? Will it change habits that lead to more containers going where they should? I doubt it. I am just not convinced that the opportunity to get 10c back by a laborious route will achieve the bill’s self-dictated objective of promoting the “recovery, re-use and recycling of empty beverage containers”. Will it lead to stockpiling of containers, registered or not, by scout groups or volunteer groups? Probably. Will this arrangement create a whole new version of difficulty, cost and inconvenience, like the clothing-for-charity bins? Will it lead to confusion as to how and where you dispose of your container? Probably.
The bill also apparently intends to encourage re-use. Quite bluntly, there is nothing in the bill that actually does anything to deliver on that front, and during our briefing the officials admitted that to be the case. Given that we have a glass mountain on the outskirts of Canberra because recyclers have discovered that the market for re-using glass is not viable, what does the bill have in mind to address this issue?
Like other jurisdictions, we have a myriad of exemptions to the scheme—milk, flavoured milk, juice greater than one litre, wines, spirits—and I note that Minister Rattenbury also expressed his concern about these exemptions. In our briefing we were advised that the ACT’s biggest waste issue by far is take-away containers, and this bill does nothing to reduce this burden.
We know we have a successful kerbside collection program in the ACT and we have a defined recycling culture. Last year’s promotion, get re-psyched about recycling, with Ricky Starr, was by any artistic standards woeful if not the ACT government’s promotional equivalent of a dad joke, but it did serve to remind Canberrans that we have in place programs for recycling and we are and need to be good managers of waste.
This bill seems to be less about improving the environmental credentials of the ACT than generating what is effectively, as my colleague Mr Wall stated, a tax on beverage consumers. As Mr Wall pointed out, suppliers of beverage containers will be charged not just the 10c per container but also the administration costs of the scheme as a whole. As such, the actual cost to suppliers, according to advice received in the briefings, will amount to more like 20c or $5 on an average slab of beer, which most likely will be passed straight on to the consumer. Although this cost sounds small, with a 50 to 100 per cent leakage you cannot call this scheme efficient.
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