State needs more haste, less waste

NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean’s pledge to develop a “comprehensive” plan to deal with plastic waste is welcome but the state has a lot more to do. The case for reducing the amount of plastic we throw away is overwhelming. Plastic waste is seeping into the waterways, gradually turning tracts of our oceans into polymer sludge, filling the stomachs of fish with cling wrap and perhaps contaminating the water we drink.

The amount has been falling as companies have caved in to pressure to reduce packaging and councils limit bin size, but the problem is still enormous and only about 14 per cent of plastic waste is recycled. Premier Gladys Berejiklian

made reducing litter her first environmental priority at the state election, but one glaring failure is that NSW remains the only state that has still not legislated a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags.

Also, while recycling is essential, NSW lacks the facilities, especially around Sydney, needed to process this mountain of extra waste. While most green and yellow bin waste is recycled, there is a worrying lack of facilities to extract recyclable material from unsorted red-bin waste.

Other countries have done better in reducing plastic waste. If we cannot match them, it raises questions about our ability to deal with even bigger environmental issues such as climate change.