The Boomerang Alliance has walked out of the Environmental Protection and Heritage Council (EPHC) hosted discussions about new national recycling measures, citing a ‘rigged’ outcome. The discussions began in June last year, when the then environment minister Peter Garrett agreed to host talks discussing additional measures to increase recycling rates Australia-wide.
Hosted by the EPHC – a group that includes state and federal environment ministers – the talks had a focus on the creation of national container deposit legislation (CDL).
Included in the talks were representatives from the packaging industry, government and green groups via an umbrella organisation that lobbies on waste – the Boomerang Alliance. Speaking to Inside Waste Weekly, the Boomerang’s Alliance’s spokesperson David West said that green groups had decided to boycott the talks on the basis that the process had a ‘predetermined’ outcome.
Putting forward his reasons in an opinion piece, West described why the Boomerang Alliance had withdrawn from the forum. “What we won’t do is be co-opted, stuck as a minority representative in a consultation group loaded up with industry front groups to rubber stamp a ‘rigged’ outcome,” he said.
West argues that the broader packaging study agreed to by the EPHC forum is biased as it includes cardboard along with glass and plastic. “According to the Australian Packaging Covenant, while cardboard now enjoys recycling rates of over 75%, glass remains less than half that rate (47%), with plastic containers even worse (34.5%).”
West argued that the inclusion of cardboard in the study would substantially change the outcome, as it had a much higher recycling rate. “Instead of deciding whether the one million-odd tonnes of containers require action; we are studying four million tonnes of packaging: three quarters of which are cardboard boxes with excellent recycling rates.”
“This predetermine[s] an outcome that under the Commonwealth’s so-called best practice regulatory methodology ensures no action will be taken,” he said.
West argued that this outcome was pushed for strongly by “big bottlers like Coca Cola”, who “pretend to co-operate with any regulatory investigation and seed certain aspects and features that will ensure the investigation fails”.
Kate Carnell, the chief executive of the Australian Food and Beverage Council argued that the walkout was a “stunt”. Describing the Boomerang Alliance as “disgruntled environmentalists” Carnell wrote in an opinion piece that the study aimed to “find the most cost-effective environmental and recycling solutions for our nation.”
Citing a study from BDA Group, Carnell specifically argued against CDL. It “is a very expensive way of increasing recycling rates in Australia,” she said. “A simpler, more cost-effective approach is to increase support for kerbside collection and away-from-home recycling, which already works in most capital cities and many towns across Australia.”
In Australia, an existing container deposit scheme has been in place in South Australia for more than 35 years. In February this year, the Northern Territory government passed the Environment Protection (Beverage Containers and Plastic Bags) Act 2011, which will allow for a container deposit scheme along with a ban on single use disposable plastic bags.
