The Greens welcome the Government signing up to an aspirational 2040 recycling pledge, but stress Australians want evidence of urgent action now on reducing and removing plastics from the waste stream – especially given the shocking collapse of soft plastic recycler REDcyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greens spokesperson for waste and recycling, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Government\u2019s aspirational 2040 recycling target is welcome but should not be a distraction from the most important targets on the table: the 2025 packaging targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSuccessive governments have spent decades delaying action on waste reduction, allowing big greedy companies to set voluntary waste reduction targets they had no intention of meeting, without any penalties or threats of regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know voluntary approaches to reducing plastic packaging simply don\u2019t work. The big plastic polluters have had their chance to clean up their act and they haven\u2019t. Big packing companies care first about their profits, not the planet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think almost everyone agrees we need action right now, and that we can\u2019t afford to wait until 2040. The only waste and recycling targets I want to hear about from the Minister are APCO\u2019s 2025 packaging targets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAPCO is tasked with leading the development of a circular economy for packaging in Australia, and we are expecting an update any day now on whether it is meeting its 2025 packaging reduction targets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Minister must be transparent about whether APCO has failed to meet its voluntary waste reduction targets, and about what action she will take if this is the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMandating recycling targets with regulation is the only way to get big businesses to take waste reduction seriously. It\u2019ll also provide the recycling industry certainty to underpin investments and upgrades in technology and capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA vague promise by the Government of regulation in three years is yet another three years of inaction. Everything should be built with its next life in mind. If it can\u2019t be reused, repaired, refurbished, or recycled then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Greens welcome the Government signing up to an aspirational 2040 recycling pledge, but stress Australians want evidence of urgent action now on reducing and removing plastics from the waste stream – especially given the shocking collapse of soft plastic recycler REDcyle. Greens spokesperson for waste and recycling, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said: \u201cThe Government\u2019s aspirational … Continue reading “GOVERNMENT’S 2040 RECYCLING PLEDGE IS A DISTRACTION”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19160,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19159\/revisions\/19160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}