Soft Plastics Recycling Technology

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (14:44): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier provide an update to the house on efforts to improve advanced soft plastic recycling technology here in South Australia?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:44): I am delighted to bring the house up to date with this because they individually, but also the people that they represent, I am certain, are very concerned about what we do about all of that film soft plastic. It seems impossible to go shopping without getting at least some of it into the shopping basket and, yet, at present, has no real destination for recycling.

People will remember that REDcycle was an organisation that offered to collect these plastics at supermarkets and would take them back to Melbourne to have them recycled. Through a number of circumstances, including a bad fire in Melbourne, that destination for soft plastics was cut off. I think in other states ministers have said to me, 'Well, actually, the one good thing about it is that it made people pay attention to the fact that we do want to recycle soft plastics.'

Here, I think it was much more devastating because you don't need to convince South Australians about recycling. We are the highest by far per capita recyclers in Australia, and 25 per cent of what was being collected in soft plastics in REDcycle across Australia was coming from South Australia, with around 7 per cent of the population. So we didn't need to be convinced and, in fact, I think it has been devastating for South Australians.

I have had to persuade people in my house not to keep stockpiling this in the hopes of being able to turn things around because they might need an EPA licence for the shed. The reality is that we need to have less of this coming in, and that is where the Packaging Covenant—which is going to be significantly toughened up through the leadership of Tanya Plibersek—reducing the amount that comes into our shopping baskets, is essential.

We have been trialling ways in which we can offer an alternative to REDcycle for collecting this material, whether it's in a very bright bag that is put into the recycling bin—otherwise please do not put these in the recycling bin; they mess up the whole process—and/or ways of having collection sites, perhaps again at supermarkets. That is being worked on at present in South Australia but in other states also.

Then, there is this big question of where does this stuff go and who buys the product that's made? The commonwealth government put aside $60 million to look into this question. I was very pleased to see a South Australian company won $20 million of that. They are putting $20 million of their investment in as well, and they are going to, in the next 12 months, bring online technology that is new to Australia (but has been proven in Europe) that is able to take the soft plastics material and turn it into the kinds of pellets that are then able to be used to be turned back into packaging and ultimately, we hope, into food-grade packaging.

What that year does is give us time to really resolve the ways in which we can allow consumers to collect the material and pass it in and have it available for this factory. We need to work out whether that factory itself, that facility, is going to be able to take all of the demand that we know is pent up and ready. I very much congratulate Recycling Plastics Australia, the company that has decided to put itself on the line and offer this.

I would say that plastic is choking us; plastic is everywhere. While it is a very useful material, it is not only very wasteful to simply get rid of it and only use it once, but it also, when it enters the river stream, can cause immense damage to wildlife. I would like to congratulate the other side of the chamber, although that individual may not presently be here, for leadership in the eradication of the single-use plastics with the piece of legislation that was brought in in that term, and we are glad to continue that to this day.