Environment Ministers agree to a set of talking points, but any plan to solve recycling crisis still

Greens spokesperson for Waste and Recycling and Healthy Oceans, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, provides the following comments on the lack of action that has emerged out of the Meeting of Environment Minister’s about the recycling crisis.

Senator Whish-Wilson said, “Speaking of waste, what a waste of time today’s Environment Ministers meeting has turned out to be.

“I have looked for a plan in what was agreed to today, but I don’t see any plan at all.

“The is not the leadership stakeholders were desperately seeking from the minister, nor will it give the waste industry the certainty or incentives needed to invest in upgrading infrastructure.

“If one day this recycling crisis is going to end we are going to need to see real policies and real funding commitments from the Federal Government, not a list of broad themes from them to all go away and work on.

“The targets Josh Frydenberg have set are diversion from the main game of dramatically reducing the amount of waste we produce and dealing with the mountains of already recyclable plastics that are building up because China won’t take our waste anymore.

“What Frydenberg has proposed as his main target is already committed to and being pushed by global packaging companies and won’t touch the sides of the recycling crisis. At best, it might deal with the currently unrecyclable coffee cups and foil chip packets, but at worst gives an impression that the Government is actually acting when the opposite is the case.

“What Josh Frydenberg means when he is talking about waste-to-energy is he wants to burn our rubbish. His solution to the recycling crisis is to take the piles of plastic that are building up around Australia and feed them into incinerators.

“Burning rubbish is not renewable energy and it is not clean energy. What is it about the Liberal Party that they always latch on to the dirtiest solution that involves using the most obsolete technology?

“Australians don’t want to see rubbish fed into furnaces, they want to see recycling and re-use done properly. Instead of showing leadership in using this crisis to guide recycling into the twenty-first century, Frydenberg has dragged us back into the dark ages,” he concluded.
Greens spokesperson for Waste and Recycling and Healthy Oceans, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson