The Greens have welcomed a historic breakthrough for better management of packaging waste and recycling in Australia, following today\u2019s release of a joint statement from key industry groups in support of a mandatory product stewardship scheme for packaging by 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question is, will Labor act now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greens spokesperson for waste and recycling, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAustralia has missed plastic and waste reduction targets for decades because our self-regulated or voluntary system of reducing plastics simply does not work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAgreement between industry and environment groups for binding regulations on reducing packaging waste is an important and historic moment. Having the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) sign-on is especially significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAPCO has always been coy about publicly advocating for a mandatory product stewardship scheme, even though many of its members want stronger regulation from government. The organisation has been plagued by a handful of powerful packaging companies, retailers or brands that have refused to do the right thing in committing to national waste reduction and recycling targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSuccessive governments have spent decades delaying action on legislating legally binding packaging reduction regulations, in the hope that big corporations will miraculously pick up their game. The polluters have had their chance to clean up their act and they haven\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTanya Plibersek threatened multiple times in this parliament that she would step in and regulate polluters if they couldn\u2019t get their act together, but she has never followed through. In the dying days of this parliament there is an opportunity here for her to win some credibility back by finally introducing a mandated product stewardship scheme for packaging and soft plastics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Greens have welcomed a historic breakthrough for better management of packaging waste and recycling in Australia, following today\u2019s release of a joint statement from key industry groups in support of a mandatory product stewardship scheme for packaging by 2026. The question is, will Labor act now? Greens spokesperson for waste and recycling, Senator Peter … Continue reading “Over to you, Tanya”<\/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-31890","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\/31890","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=31890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31891,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31890\/revisions\/31891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}