United Nations Ocean Conference address

SUBJECTS: Plastic pollution, oceans, recycling, plastic export ban, New Plastics Economy Global Commitment

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: I represent the federal electorate of Sydney, the biggest city in Australia - the inner suburbs of that city but also, unusually, a little island called Lord Howe Island which is about 600km off the east coast of Australia. 

Lord Howe Island is Heritage Listed and it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. When you go to Lord Howe Island, every now and then you find seabirds washed up onshore, seabirds that have starved to death because they can’t eat fish, they’re too full of plastic. 

We also have in Australia a massive problem of ghostnets off our north coast washing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, that are tangling and killing our dugongs, whales, dolphins and sea turtles.

An estimated 5000 to 14,500 thousand turtles in the Gulf of Carpentaria are captured by ghostnets, even saltwater crocodiles are captured and killed by ghostnets.

So you can see the enormous problem of plastics in our oceans, but as our friend said, not just in our oceans, we’re swallowing about a credit card’s worth of microplastics each week as humans.

So, we see the scale of this problem and in fact we know that it is absolutely critical that governments do more, that countries do more to tackle the issue of plastics in our ocean and on our shores as well.

Australia has a national plastics plan which involves the phase out of unnecessary plastics in addition to working with states and territories. 
 
We have three levels of government that are actually working on plastics and recycling policy in Australia which does complicate things a little bit but gives us an opportunity as well, so we’re working with states and territories. 

We have invested $190 million on a recycling modernisation fund which brings in about $800 million of additional private sector investment as well into the recycling infrastructure that we’re building.

We have a modern manufacturing strategy worth about a billion and a half dollars where we’re trying to use some of the new innovative materials and develop industries in those new innovative packaging materials.

As well as a $20 million product stewardship fund where we’re trying to work with industry groups to ensure that they lead thought about product stewardship in their own industry, so e-waste is an obvious one but we’re looking at fabrics, mattresses, a whole range of other products as well in the future.

So, we want to get to a situation where 100 per cent of packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. That’s actually very tough on the trajectory that we’re on at the moment but it is something we are aspiring to.

We know that it’s not just about recycling though, we should be producing less plastic in the first place. 

We’ve got some phenomenally exciting projects happening in Australia and I’m sure that all of the countries that are represented here have similar projects that we can share in years to come. 

I visited, just a couple of weeks ago, our Australian National University - it has a start-up based there where they are breaking plastics down to their fundamental building blocks using enzymes. 

So, instead of recycling plastics by melting it down and reforming it. they’re actually breaking it down to a molecular level. So instead of recycling 4 or 5 times and losing the structural integrity of that plastic over time, you can actually infinitely recycle the plastics.This technology works without additional new virgin inputs into that material.

I’ve got another university project at the University of Technology in Sydney where they are using no waste green chemistry to develop plastics substitutes from algae, essentially from algae. So that while you’re manufacturing these materials you’re sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, not releasing it into the atmosphere. Such exciting technology there as well.

So, we know as the new Australian Government the urgency of the environmental challenge that is presented by plastics.

That is why today I’m very pleased to announce that Australia will sign up to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment before the end of 2022.

In particular, we are very keen to work with our friends and partners in the Pacific to reduce plastics in our oceans and waterways. I really do believe that it is possible to see a plastic free Pacific in our lifetime and I think that’s certainly an ambition that we would like to pursue. 

Can I finish by saying also that as well as our efforts on recycling plastics domestically, one of the most important things Australia has done in recent years is actually ban the export of plastic waste. 

In the past we have collected plastic for recycling and shipped it offshore and forgotten about it once it’s been shipped offshore. 

By banning the export of plastic waste, we are forcing ourselves to come up with innovative techniques for recycling that plastic waste and I believe this will force us to make use of the innovative new technologies that I described a moment ago and many of the other approaches that are being used across the nation.

I am very pleased to be able share some of these new activities with you today and look forward to working with all of you to reduce the use of plastics particularly problematic plastics, recycle more when we can and make sure that we’re doing it as a global community. 

Thank you.