The Greens have demanded the investment of $500 million over five years into infrastructure and projects to improve recycling in Australia.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The call comes following a restriction from China on Australia’s recycling waste imports.
Greens recycling spokesman Peter Whish-Wilson said the funding program should be run by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, matched dollar-for-dollar by state governments.
He said the party wanted to see another $10 million given to community groups and social enterprises to manage reuse and recycling centres, mandatory targets for procurement of recycled material across the three levels of government, and the introduction of a national container deposit scheme.
“The system is failing and the industry is in crisis,” Senator Whish-Wilson said.
“This problem has been a long time coming and the Chinese restriction on importing waste has tipped it over the edge.”
“There needs to be a comprehensive federal government plan to solve the crisis.”
“We have to deal with our own waste here, not rely on others to take it from us.
We need to sort our rubbish better to improve the quality of the waste streams we produce to allow our local manufacturing industries to turn it again into useful products.”
The party also want the National Waste Policy to be redeveloped with targets for 90 per cent recovery of municipal waste and 75 cent recycling of packaging waste by 2030.