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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-07-06 Daily Xml
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Single-Use Plastics

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (16:15): In the first 10 years of this century, as a planet we made more plastic in the entirety of that than the last century and, in fact, any time before it. By 2050, on current standings, there will be more plastic in the oceans than there will be fish. That is right, within three decades arguably more plastic than fish.

I was at the beach last night with my family and I was looking at the ocean. It is hard to tell, while you are corralling some eight year olds, but the fact is that 40 per cent of that ocean surface that I was looking at had plastic in it. While the oceans are very much the responsibility of the world, Australians use 130 kilos of plastic per person per year, and we recycle less than 12 per cent of that. It is not just our fish that are consuming the plastic either, it is us, too. If you are listening to me right now, this week it is very likely that you have consumed up to 2,000 tiny pieces of plastic since seven days ago. That is right, 2,000 small bits of plastic, and they are in you right now.

Essentially, what I am saying is that we are all slowly turning into the small little pieces of toys that we all played with, or at least I did as a child, and that is Lego men. My sons play with them but I do not particularly want to be one. I hope that by now, by saying all this and bringing these statistics to your attention, that I have your attention. The question you may be asking is: what are we going to do about it? I am glad you asked. Significant global surveys have made clear that more than 90 per cent of people support policies and actions to reduce plastic waste, and locally we think so, too.

A survey of over 3,000 South Australians found that 97 per cent of people agree that single-use plastic is a major issue to be addressed, and we are acting. We, of course, were the first state in the nation to ban lightweight checkout bags. Last year, we also banned a whole range of single-use plastic cutlery and stirrers—something like a million items every year—and of course we were proudly the first state to introduce bottle deposit legislation, something that is now so quintessentially South Australian that other states, as they have slowly had to bring it in, have been forced to refer to South Australia as a leader.

These measures, on the face of it, seem pretty modest and I guess on their own they would be, but they are part of a range of measures—very sensible measures—we have taken to change people's attitudes and their values about the way that we live for now and for the future. This week, during Plastic free July, we took another vital and very important step with the passing of the BYO containers bill. It will allow business owners the freedom to accept containers from consumers without liability, encouraging more businesses to do this and, in turn, allowing more consumers to adopt the practice of eliminating wasteful, single-use plastic containers.

I congratulate the Hon. Mr Simms on the passage of a bill that he introduced not once but, somewhat ironically, twice. Even though everyone in here supported the bill last time, it never made it to a vote in the lower house, as the Liberals voted to shut down parliament before it could do so. Perhaps the Liberals and their leader felt that a bill to reduce single-use plastics should in fact be recycled or repurposed.

In any event, the Peter Malinauskas government has moved very swiftly to implement BYO containers because we know that when it comes to recycling or reducing the wasteful practice of single-use plastics there is literally no time to waste. It has been passed this week, with everybody voting for it, which I think continues to send the very clear message that we understand what it is that people expect in relation to single-use plastics.

We understand the seriousness that single-use plastics pose in terms of energy and in water costs to business, and the danger to our oceans and the environment in terms of the waste that single-use plastics create. Our state can continue to lead the way—not with mere words, but with meaningful change—to solving it.

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