02 June, 2026
https://youtu.be/Z6zLjfc_CJk
15:30): I support the Environmental Legislation (Plastic Reduction and Container Recycling) Bill 2026, which would require takeaway and hospitality businesses to implement re‑usable takeaway cup schemes and legally prohibit cafes from charging customers a fee for supplying beverages in those cups. I strongly agree with the drafting of the bill in terms of granting powers to regulators to issue compliance notices and requiring scheme coordinators to obtain approval before entering into network or supply arrangements. As members know, plastic waste has negative impacts on the environment. Accumulation of waste can lead to leaching of pollutants into air, water and land. That has an impact on natural processes and amenity. Waste products may be ingested by animals—for example, wildlife ingesting toxins in rivers—which can impact the survival and reproduction of native animals. Economically, plastic waste can be costly to remove, process and manage, as we have seen with PFAS.
The bill has relevance to my local communities. The prospect of a recycling plant was, and still is, acutely felt in the Southern Highlands area. If this was as easy as changing cups, it would be a very simple thing to administer, but the bill introduces many changes—around balloons, for instance—to protect our future generations. The Southern Highlands has just been named the best tourism area to visit. I am sure the people who visit and have coffees there would be willing to use re-usable cups as they see the beautiful area that is the Southern Highlands. The Southern Highlands community strongly objected to the proposed RePoly—formerly Plasrefine—plastic recycling plant in Moss Vale. That factory was designed to process up to 120,000 tonnes of mixed plastic waste per year. The scale of the proposed RePoly factory was to process approximately 10 per cent of the total plastic waste in New South Wales. I am not sure why we would choose to build it close to residents and schools.
I agree with the objective of the bill to promote a transition to a circular economy. A circular economy keeps plastic products and materials in use for as long as possible. The bill should also aim higher by prioritising reduction of plastic waste in the first instance and ahead of re-use and recycling of plastic waste. The bill could be amended to create a legislative framework that favours reducing the number of single-use plastics that are produced in the State and eventually enter the circular economy. Furthermore, the efficacy of the bill would increase if the Government incorporated a review of the New South Wales waste levy and the Environment Protection Authority [EPA] environment pollution hotline.
The waste levy and the hotline exist to control the location, frequency and amount of waste disposed of, both authorised and unauthorised landfill. Amendments to these compliance and enforcement mechanisms should be included in the bill. The Government should consider including measures to phase out manufacturing and wholesale trading of problematic single-use plastic items, incentivise manufacturers and producers to design out problematic plastics, increase resourcing of the EPA hotline to respond to reported incidents of dumping, increase punitive costs of plastic waste pollution, and reduce demand for plastic recycling plants. Those factories are an absolute last resort, should not be fast-tracked and, as I said before, definitely should not be built near residents and schools.
Transitioning to plastic re-use systems such as refillable containers and re-usable packaging significantly reduces the carbon footprint across the value chain and directly lessens the overall demand for plastic recycling plants. The bill could reduce the demand for mechanical and chemical recycling of plastics, a highly energy‑intensive process. The bill is time critical and should be supported to encourage plastic re-use, theoretically reducing overall demand for plastic waste recycling, and avoid the many air, water and other environmental impacts of plastic recycling plants as conveyed by the Southern Highlands community.
The effectiveness of the bill should be evidenced by monitoring the percentage of plastic waste recycled each year. Total waste generated in New South Wales is forecast to grow from 21 million tonnes in 2021 to nearly 37 million tonnes by 2041. This is related to the State's continued increase in population, economic growth, and product consumption and disposal. In the five years to 2022-23, the EPA reported that, on average, only around 13 per cent of the State's plastic waste was recycled each year out of an annual average of 850,000 tonnes generated. Recent reports from Clean Up Australia state that the proportion of plastics found within waste has risen from 47 per cent in 1991 to over 80 per cent. This is despite plastics being a common waste product for over 50 years. In summary, I recommend that members support the bill. Yes, a lot can be done to improve it. The bill promotes re-use, the second concept in the waste hierarchy and ahead of plastic recycling. The bill could reduce the overall rate of plastic waste generated per capita, and reduce the need for plastic recycling plant land use in our communities to process toxic plastic waste products.