ABC Melbourne Drive interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

SUBJECTS: FAST FASHION WASTE, DRUG AND ALCOHOL TESTING IN PARLIAMENT.

ALI MOORE, HOST: Do you try and avoid what we call fast fashion? Would you rather spend more on less but better quality? Or maybe you like to keep up with the latest trends, and you turn over your wardrobe on a regular basis. If the Government follows through on a warning it's given to the fashion industry, fast fashion could become a lot harder to come by. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek wants brands to rethink how much they produce and how fast they produce it. Minister, welcome to Drive.

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Great to be with you, Ali.

MOORE: How big an issue is fast fashion in this country?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it's a huge issue. We put almost a quarter of a million tonnes of clothing into landfill every single year in Australia, and we export more than 100,000 tonnes as well. And that mostly ends up in foreign landfills. So, you can see what an enormous problem it is when it comes to waste and landfill. It's also the resources that we consume when we're making these things.
So, if you just take an average t-shirt, you need about six kilograms of carbon to produce that t-shirt, and it takes about 2700 litres of water. So, I'm not saying you shouldn't buy the T-shirt, but if you can wear it more than once - the average T-shirt is worn, say, 20 times - if you can wear it 60 times instead, you're really dramatically reducing the amount of pollution and water for each wear.

MOORE: That's a lot of water for one t-shirt.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's incredible, isn't it?

MOORE: How did they come to that number?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it obviously includes all of the water that goes into growing the fabric, and then you've got all the milling and other processes that go into the shirt. You know Ali, one of the figures that really stunned me frankly when I first read it, was that the fashion industry is responsible for about 10 per cent of humanity's carbon emissions. So, more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. That really struck me.

MOORE: When you talk about how much we have that goes into landfill in this country, how much of it is - and we also export, but how much of it, in
the beginning, is stuff that we make here and how much is stuff that we import?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, the vast majority of the clothing we wear in Australia today is imported. I'm going from memory now, but I think it's about 97 per cent is actually imported. So, it's really important, of course, that we've got Australian designers doing great things.Like we've got Bianca Spender, who uses remnant fabrics, stops them going into landfill. Lorna Jane, they're expanding their range of sustainable fabrics, including a whole lot more recycled fabric and internationally certified sustainable fabrics in the Lorna Jane range. That's all great.
But when we're importing at the volumes that we're importing, we also need to put some responsibility, not just onto the designers, but also onto the retailers, to make sure that they're taking some responsibility for the lifecycle of these items of clothing. Really, what we're talking about is product stewardship. It's really having the designers and the sellers and the industry thinking about the environmental impact of making the product and also the lifecycle and the disposal of that product.

MOORE: I guess, though, how do you do that? Because the brands that you just named are pretty high-end brands. When you're talking about the mass produced, where the pricing is based on the quantity, not necessarily the quality, how do you change that? And you're dealing in a global market.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, I think it's really important to say this is not an argument against affordable clothing. We know that, in fact, it's a good thing that families can buy some good value clothing, stick the kids in it running around, they wear it till it falls apart. That's fantastic. This is really something a little more sophisticated than that. I think the best example of a really effective product stewardship scheme that we have in Australia at the moment is the product stewardship scheme for oil, which has collected about five and a half billion litres -in fact produced about five and a half billion litres of recycled oil from the oil that's been collected since it was set up. So, that is a phenomenal success story. Almost all of the oil that is used in Australia is actually collected in this product stewardship for oil scheme and re-refined into oil that can be used again, keeping it out of landfill, keeping it out of the environment, making sure that we're getting maximum value from that product. That's a great example.
Right now, I'm working with the states and territories to reform our packaging laws and some of the things that we'll do there are ban some types of single-use plastics. We will perhaps ban some types of materials. We might set some minimum content for recycled materials in packaging. There's a range of things that we can do to reduce the environmental impacts of fashion. I would much prefer if the fashion industry took the lead on this and in fact, last year, they set up the Seamless program, which so far is a voluntary product stewardship scheme for the fashion industry. We've had some fantastic, large, important Australian brands join in. So, Big W, Rip Curl, the iconic R. M. Williams, David Jones, Lorna Jane. They have all signed up already. Just recently, Sussan Group and Cotton On Group have said that they'll join on as well.
If we can get the fashion industry to be a bit more conscientious in what they're designing so that it can be reused, recycled, repaired, kept out of landfill, and then investing in things like recycling, textile recycling, then I think we've got a really bright future for fashion in Australia, led by the fashion industry themselves.

MOORE: You're listening to the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, and we're talking about fast fashion. I'm curious to know whether or not you avoid it or you do like to turn your wardrobe over regularly, and whether you think there's a better way of doing it. Minister, that pilot program you just referred to, the Seamless, that was started with the Australian Fashion Council, that includes a 4 per cent levy, doesn't it? That applies to clothes that are imported or made.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, that's not right. What they initially proposed was a four cent per garment levy, and that's something that will be up to Seamless to decide. That hasn't been finalised yet, but -

MOORE: So, they don't put - it's not in place now?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, it's not in place now. And when you think that the average Australian buys 56 items of clothing every year, you're talking about $2 a year, if that's the model they went through. But that is something that the voluntary product stewardship scheme Seamless would decide for themselves.

MOORE: If you want to make progress on this and you want to push progress on this, can you see making something like a levy mandatory?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, my strong preference, and I've said this very clearly to the fashion industry, is that they take responsibility and do this themselves and get it right. And indeed, where you've got a product stewardship scheme for oil that's been so successful, you see that this model can work really effectively. If fashion industry don't step up, if we continue to see the growth of this volume of pollution - 227,000 tonnes of clothing going into landfill each year in Australia -hat is not acceptable, and we will step in and regulate.

MOORE: But how would you regulate if it's not a levy?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: That is something that we would have to work through with the industry.

MOORE: It's vexed, though, isn't it? Because it's multinationals.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, but we know that there's retailers in Australia importing these clothes in very large volume and we'd have to work with them to come up with a practical and streamlined solution. But there are models for that, I think there's some great examples, like the oil scheme, that are working effectively -

MOORE: Sure, so how long -

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'd like to see more of this with other products as well. We're right now in the process of working on electronics and small white goods to make sure that we're keeping them out of landfill as well.

MOORE: So, how long do you give the fashion industry?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I've said I'd like to see some strong results this year.

MOORE: Well, we will stay tuned to see what happens to that. Environment Minister Plibersek, can I just ask you a completely different question? There's been a lot of conversation in the last week about drinking in Parliament House. Do you think there should be random drug and alcohol testing in Canberra?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I don't think people should be drunk at work. It doesn't matter where they work. I don't think anybody should be drunk at work or drug affected, obviously. I think it's a bit of a sad situation if we have to be drug and alcohol testing.

MOORE: Plenty of workplaces do.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah. And usually it's because they're operating heavy machinery and there's a physical risk to people's safety and so on. So, you do have to be careful about taking that approach. I could not be clearer, I don't think people should drink at work. I don't -

MOORE: But you don't support -

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, look, honestly, if you're electing people and you trust them with the future of the country, but you can't trust them not to be drunk at work, I think you need to think twice about whether you vote for them next time.

MOORE: Tanya Plibersek, many thanks for joining us.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's a pleasure.

MOORE: That's the Minister for the Environment and Water there.

END