Page 530 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 February 2020
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outside in a disordered fashion. It is the volunteers who arrive on a Monday morning who are required to sort through other people’s junk that is piled up outside the store. Add the possibility that the material may have got rained on over the weekend—or some other form of bad weather, possibly an unexpected hailstorm—and volunteers are effectively left to dispose of other people’s junk. This is not fair. It imposes a cost on the organisation and there needs to be greater awareness of the impact this behaviour has on charities and volunteers going about their business.
As Mr Steel’s amendment notes, the ACT government is undertaking ongoing education campaigns on the consequences of littering and illegal dumping. The Greens believe there is opportunity for an education and behavioural change campaign to also include messaging on the impacts to community and the environment, particularly on the impacts on charities and the costs that it places on them when this sort of littering and dumping take place.
It is clear that we need effective enforcement mechanisms and responses to dumping and litter issues. In that context, it is worth looking back to amendments at the Litter Act considered in the Assembly last year. The amendments made it easier for citizens to report dumping, whereby if an individual has evidence that a person or vehicle is responsible for dumping, it can be reported to authorities and the offender will be subsequently issued with an infringement. Going forward, this will be an efficient and effective way for the public to report offenders and hopefully reduce the incidence of illegal littering and dumping.
We would expect that more time is required in order to assess the full effectiveness of these amendments and subsequent changes to management and processes regarding dumping and littering. However, I believe the government has shown its commitment to tackling the issue by implementing tighter regulations, dedicating a greater number of rangers to patrol littering and dumping and issue infringements, the rollout of a free kerbside bulky waste collection, easier reporting mechanisms and a dedicated compliance team to enforce dumping laws, using mobile CCTV. As with any technology, online reporting mechanisms will evolve, and we support the government to continue to explore ways to make reporting easier for individuals.
The Greens believe that part of this discussion also needs to be about how we engage with all of this stuff and the things we seem to be obsessed with as a society. Our consumer culture leads to an excess of items, and the amount of waste this leads to is simply staggering. We need to start thinking about buying our items to last and not disposing of them as soon as they break, or perhaps as soon as we think we do not need them anymore. Certainly, in terms of breaking, they are then deemed immediately useless.
As individuals, we need to think a little more deeply about the items we are purchasing and acknowledge that when we simply dispose of our bulky items that could be repaired, or replace our old stuff with new stuff before it has reached the end of its life, these are contributions to waste and landfill and this has significant consequences for the environment. The production of new items to replace old or unwanted items obviously results in greenhouse gas emissions, therefore exacerbating issues of climate change. Ultimately, and this is the bottom line, our pattern of
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