Question Time

ZERO WASTE SA

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (15:10): Can the minister confirm whether, in relation to kerbside recycling and contamination from organic waste, it is correct (as she stated last week on radio) that, with any amount of organic waste, it means that the whole truckload is dumped into landfill, or whether it was, in fact, a furphy, as one of the callers rang in to advise?

The PRESIDENT: I do not know whether that supplementary question was out of last week's answer or out of last week's radio interview.

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: It was supposed to be out of the answer given today.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Environment and Conservation, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister Assisting the Minister for Health) (15:11): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to set the record straight in relation to that particular matter. In fact, I did not say on radio that contaminated bins would necessarily result in the dumping of a complete container load of waste. In fact, a great deal of resources go into sifting through the waste and removing those items that are not sorted in the appropriate bins. What I did do on radio was promote people's awareness of the importance of putting waste in appropriate bin collections, and I tried to make people more aware of that. Many people put incorrect materials in bins simply out of ignorance; so we are conducting a campaign at the moment which is about improving people's awareness and educating them about the appropriate materials to go into the bins.

I am not too sure how that misleading information got about but, as I said, if incorrect material goes into waste collection the result is that it requires considerable human resources to have to then sift through that material and sort out the items that should not be there.